When it comes to comfort food, congee (or rice porridge) is one of my favourites. It used to be poorcel food when people didn't have enough rice, since cooking rice in a lot of water would make the end product appear a lot more filling to the poorcels Because of this it's considered a taboo to have it during the Lunar New Year because it's unlucky or something like that, however in modern times you'll find that the humble dish is often elevated with expensive ingredients like abalone, dried scallops and whatnot

Having said that it's still more common to find it paired with more common ingredients like shredded chicken, minced pork, sliced fish and century eggs because we're a bunch who might just want an affordable and yummy meal For the Chinese there are generally 2 types of congee or porridge, one would be the Teochew version that's basically just water in rice, and the other would be the Cantonese version that's silky and thick, and we will be focusing on the latter version because that's the one I like

While I'm aware of the fact that there are no winters in Singapore and it's hot as heck, it's still a popular dish here especially for breakfast. You'd see long queues and long waiting times at the popular outlets here everyday still, so I can only imagine and be envious of how nice a warm bowl of congee during a real winter

The recipe I'm using is for the plain version of it without meat or anything so it's up to your imagination what you want to pair it with. The usual salt and pepper seasoning would probably work with most types of meat that you'll just dunk in the pot when it's 10ish or so minutes before the congee is done cooking.

Ingredients are simple:

• Rice (any type is fine but Thai Jasmine rice probably works best IMO)

• Water (I use a 8:1 water to rice ratio because I like it thiccc but you can use more water if you prefer)

• Ginger

• Spring Onions

• Cilantro/Coriander Leaves

• Chicken Stock/Bouillon

I've not listed the amount you'd need because in cuisine we would usually just eyeball an amount that's required according to our preferences lol, but if you really need a visual guide here's the amount of aromatics/garnishes that I've prepared for a serving of 2-3 bowls of congee. Ignore the dried scallops because I don't know how accessible they are to get for westoids and they're expensive, but if you're able to source for it then go for it I guess (crush the dried scallops into smaller pieces, soak it for 10 minutes, use your hands to shred them even more before finally dunking them into the pot 10 minutes before the congee is done)

Steps:

1. The trick to getting your congee silky and thick is that the rice grains need to burst or something like that while cooked, so we will be soaking the rice in water first to get that effect. Rinse the rice 2-3 times first before soaking it in water for 3-4 hours (it probably doesn't need to be this long idk). Some of the recipes I've seen say that it's not necessary to soak the rice grains if you use the right type of rice, while others would instruct you to freeze the rice the night before. They might be right so you could try it if you're short on time but I'll be doing the trad way of soaking the rice so don't @ me if it turns out bad using the other methods

2. Once you're done soaking the rice, boil water that's 8 times the amount of rice you're gonna cook, but it's really up to you if you want to add more water later if you don't like it to be too thiccc Once it boils I'd toss a couple of chicken bouillon cubes and stir until it's dissolved. Canned chicken stock or powder would probably work too but bouillon cubes are just more convenient IMO. They look like this if you're confused:

3. Throw the rice in and stir for it for a bit like 10-20 seconds and then leave it to cook for approx. 25 or so minutes without touching what's in the pot because apparently that helps the rice not to stick to the pot or something like that

4. Once 25 or so minutes are up, whisk the rice in the pot for 2-3 minutes until you can see it getting thicker

5. The dish is technically done after you're done whisking but I like it really thick so I'd leave it to cook for another hour or so, but I would add in the ginger and any meat/fish/seafood accompaniments 10 minutes before the hour is up and stir it around for a bit, it's really a preference and time thing. This is the thickness of my congee at the end of it all:

6. Garnish it with spring onions and cilantro/coriander leaves and you're done! The yellow/golden things are dough fritters (Chinese churros I guess) which go perfect with congee and I personally love to spice it up by dousing a lot of pepper in it

It might look plain and boring but because the rice grains have burst they absorb the flavours of the other ingredients cooked along with it, which in this case would be the chicken bouillon and dried scallops, so it's a real burst of flavours happening when you take a mouthful of congee. Furthermore it's easier to digest than normal cooked rice so it's the dish you usually see asians serve to people recuperating from illnesses or something like that

!jannies please pin effortpost

And we are back for the second half of the Aretine's story! To catch you back up from last time, we went over the early life of Pietro Aretino, his insertion into the Roman Papal court, and his fall from favor after supporting the wrong Papal candidate, his skills as a writer guiding him all through this process. Now we join him in his departure from Rome as the new Pope Adrian VI sets sail from Spain to the Eternal City. We'll see if Aretino can keep up with the changing political atmosphere and if his old allies, the Medici, make a resurgence.

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LYING LOW IN HIGH PLACES

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

Pietro first attempted to make for Florence, expecting a place in Giulio's household, but ended up turned away. The Cardinal, and Medicis in general, were left embarrassed and on shaky foundations after the election. They'd lost power in Rome and the plebs of Florence were becoming increasingly uppity, so they just couldn't be seen with a figure with as many enemies as Pietro Aretino. Giulio instead introduced the writer to Federico Gonzaga II, Marquis of Mantua, and had the lord reserve a seat for Pietro at his court.

The Marquis was a young but savvy political maneuverer and enthusiastic appreciator of the arts, as nearly all of his class were of the day (or at least presented themselves as). When Aretino joined his court, he was enraptured by the man, frequently attempting to engage Pietro in lengthy conversation and near-obsessively pouring over any piece of Aretino's writing. He'd become one of Pietro's longest and most loyal political allies and patrons during his life.

Aretino himself recognized the Marquis' usefulness to him, but never quite respected the man as he did his other friends. Throughout their relationship, Aretino would so often ask for favors and support in his endeavors that the Marquis at one time explained that even his resources were running thin trying to accommodate the man. Despite generally looking down on the young Marquis, Aretino stayed in his court for some time, enjoying the same pleasures he did in Rome and mingling with many of the same people, as the Gonzagas were prominent enough to attract much of the Italian elite.

(Portrait of Federico)

Nevertheless, Aretino was unsatisfied with life with the Marquis. It wasn't long before he had the man write to Giulio himself, again requesting a place in Florence. The Cardinal replied that Aretino was a "loud mouthed and unreliable troublemaker", punctuating the insult with a thinly veiled threat, reminding him that his Holiness Pope Adrian VI had ordered the arrest of said loud mouthed troublemaker. Unmoved by the rebuff, Aretino personally set out for Florence with another letter he had the Marquis compose, aiming to confront the Cardinal directly.

Pietro was lucky Cardinal Giulio was the man he was. Nicknamed "the Chameleon" for good reason, he completely changed tone when Aretino stood before him in Florence. Giulio was first and foremost a politician, and one unwilling to dispose of a potentially useful asset. When confronted by the man, the Cardinal was nothing but cordial, saying that while he couldn't defy the Pope's orders and accommodate the writer in Florence, he could place him under the protection of an old friend.

Aretino arrived near Reggio in Emilia (not to be confused with Reggio, Calabria) greeted by an army without a single mark of discipline. At all hours of the day and night, soldiers drank, partied, and fricked. All at the expense of the local peasant population, who they robbed of food and valuables, kidnapping their wives and daughters for their own use. The state of the army was by design, as the man who commanded it was Ludovico de'Medici, 'The Great Devil'.

In Reggio he made like any soldier there would, minus the violence. That was another ironic thing about Pietro's and Ludovico's relationship: Pietro hated violence, while Ludovico relished in it. He often led his men from the fore, engaging in battle just as closely as any of his soldiers. He and Pietro drank, ate, schmoosed with the men and locals, and above all, fricked. Later in life when the writer recalled Reggio in a letter, his reminisces focused almost solely on his and Ludovico's amorous adventures. Aretino held a very passionate affair with the local count's wife, Countess Madrina, while Ludovico was obsessed with a frustratingly chaste woman named Paola.

In fact it's a bit how he wrote of Ludovico then,

Did you ever see a more continent or timid lover than Giovanni [Ludovico, ('Giovanni' is Italian for John, his nickname)]? Did you remember how for three days he ate nothing and thereafter was like some engine in his ferocity? [...] Owing to the grandeur of his soul he was able to quench the fire that was truly burning up his heart in festivals, banquets, and jousts, when he shattered with lustful thrusts of his lance the very columns that supported her portico.

...hmmm

Anyway, by September 14, 1523, things had changed and his time in Reggio was coming to an end. It was on that day that Pope Adrian VI did the only thing any Italian ever appreciated him for, and died. He was old and it was likely the lifetime of overwork that killed him, but that didn't stop the Romans from throwing a miniature festival in honor of his doctor.

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

THE RIZZLER

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

Aretino returned to Rome fashionably late for Cardinal Giulio's election as Pope Clement VII in December, 1523. This time the election was a foregone conclusion, as Giulio had beforehand acquiesced to the influential French faction of Roman politics, and King Francis I of France's ambassadors exerted enough pressure to dissolve the Colonna party. With Clement's election, Aretino believed his presence in the city would be welcome again.

(Francis I of France)

It was on the road to Rome that Pietro wrote a couple insulting satires of a man named Gianmatteo Giberti, Papal Datary and head of the French faction. It was the start of a long rivalry that would cause both men headaches that probably would've been best left avoided. Pietro was a famous and well respected writer that held a reputation high skill, especially in Rome. His word could greatly influence the public's perception of powerful figures, while his opponent held vast institutional power. As Papal Datary, Giberti controlled who did what within the Roman administration, including who was allowed close to the Pope.

But so what if some government middleman didn't like him? Surely he'd be fine with the backing of the Pope and the public! And he was, for the most part. He reestablished himself well there, quickly picking back up where he left off, running in banquets with the likes of the d'Estes and Gonzagas, sharing and receiving secrets and rumors. Pietro was entrenched again in Rome, protected among friends. His enemies wouldn't or couldn't do anything to touch him. Plucking the thorn out their side wasn't worth the bleeding it'd incur.

So his outer walls may have been unassailable, but that didn't mean he was always perfect. It shouldn't surprise you by now to hear Aretino didn't like to adhere to public sensibilities. Many of his works were seen as rather uncouth by the standards of their day, and he was called out more than a few times as such. Now, that isn't completely unheard of in his field. Many pioneer artist shirk convention in the pursuit of innovation, and the High Renaissance was certainly a time of change. That didn't mean there wasn't consequences, and Aretino was to learn that the hard way.

A master engraver employed by the Pope, Raimondi, created 16 sexually explicit engravings, based on 16 sketches by the artist Giulio Romano, who was now out of the spotlight in Mantua. When a couple of prudes brought this up with Clement VII in the Summer of 1524, he was forced to order the arrest of Raimondi, more to save face than out of genuine moral outrage. The scandal caught the attention of many elite artist and patrons of Rome, who sympathized with the imprisoned creative. Among them was Aretino, who advocated for his release by directly confronting the Pope, bypassing the official channel of the Datary.

This turned out to be a very dangerous misstep by Aretino, who had put himself at the center of the situation. It soon came out that the original 16 sketches were accompanied by 16 equally adult sonnets, and they were all remarkably similar to Aretino's signature style... Everyone knew it was him, and it was only a matter of time before the Pope had to issue another arrest warrant. So Pietro again fled North, and by invitation into the arms of his closest friend, Ludovico de'Medici.

(Fragment of the "Lustful Sonnets" that caused the scandal.)

Luckily for Aretino, the North was embroiled in war between the French king and German emperor, and Ludovico was one of the French side's principal commanders. This meant that Pietro could not only spend time with his favorite friend, but also had direct contact with King Francis I of France, the primary ally of the Pope and his Datary. Unluckily for Pietro, the active campaign meant that they hardly had time to engage in the same shenanigans they'd loved in Reggio.

One small noteworthy incident that occurred during this time was Niccolo Machiavelli's visit to the army. Ludovico had invited him along, and let him command his company for a brief period outside of action. The Florentine author proved himself more a theorist than a leader when he ordered the men to walk in confusing patterns till he was red-in-the-face exhausted, all the while Pietro and Ludovico laughed from the sidelines. They were all good natured about it, and Machiavelli afterward admitted that he lacked the ability to properly drill an army unit. However despite the environment, Aretino was hardly here for military matters.

Francis I was a highly respected monarch. Many, including Aretino, hailed him as the epitome of Renaissance kingship. It something he made great displays of; most famously in the "Field of the Cloth of Gold", a meeting between him and Henry VIII, meant to solve diplomatic matters while displaying the grandeur of both respective kings' courts'. In true Renaissance fashion, the meeting was lavish and almost theatrical, featuring tents of gold cloths, lavish meals, routine games, courtly processions, expensive gifts from foreign princes, and an entire temporary palace built for the visiting Henry VIII. If Aretino could successfully charm this charismatic king, then all of his Roman problems would be as good as solved.

Again, Aretino's reputation as a cajoler of the powerful preceded him here, as Francis I instantly took a liking to the writer. Through Francis, Aretino won back the favor of Clement and even got into the good graces of Giberti and his French faction, returning to Rome in November, 1524.

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

ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG

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

Aretino soon got back into the groove of things, but war still raged on in the North after he won back his seat in Rome. Everything was going well with the French and it benefited him to be in their good graces, but that was soon to change. Francis' forces proved insufficient to take Milan, possibly due to purposeful sandbagging from the questionably loyal Duke of Urbino, lead commander of the Pope's military. Unable to make headway there, the French king advanced toward Pavia on the Po River, but was captured in the ensuing battle on the 25th of February, 1525.

(Pavia)

Now, this was obviously a problem for anyone in Rome who considered themselves French-aligned. Pietro himself immediately jumped ship the second the Frenchies were on the back step, spewing vitriol and condemnation from his pulpit, where before he had nothing but praise to shower the Frogs with. The polemics continued for several months until July 28th, when Pietro was assaulted one evening, and stabbed several times before being left for dead on the road.

Someone up there must've been watching out for Aretino, probably someone who found him amusing, because the scuffle was heard by people nearby, who came rushing to his aid. The writer survived greatly injured, and was for some months held up in his bed, deathly sick. During that time, many visitors came to his bedside, some swearing to avenge the assault, others to shame the man for his impiety, and one to apologize.

This visitor identified himself as Achille Della Volta, a rival writer who had lost the competition of one cook's heart to Aretino, for which Della Volta said he was motivated to commit the murder. Pietro didn't buy his story. He may have had many affairs in his life, but he didn't remember this cook. After a bit of prodding of this would-be murderer, it was revealed that he was employed in Gianmatteo Giberti's service, the party Aretino already expected to be responsible.

The event made Aretino seriously reevaluate his position in society. For his entire career, he'd been bouncing around the power centers of Italy, dodging daggers from power hungry and egotistical noblemen and their lackeys, all the while being just as deceitful as any one of them. It wasn't the hypocrisy nor immorality he minded. He was completely content with both, and would be for the rest of his life. What bothered him was that at any time, there could be another Della Volta running him through with a dagger, and he might actually hit something this time.

When Pietro recovered, he left Rome on October 13th, 1525, briefly spending time in Federico Gonzaga's court before joining again Ludovico in Lombardy (part of N. Italy). The war was back on then, as Francis had been released from captivity in exchange for his renunciation of the French hereditary claim to the Duchy of Burgundy, now a firmly Imperial Hapsburg appendage. Ludovico promised Aretino glory in the campaign. That after he and his Italians drove the foreign barbarians from Italy, the Marquisate of Arezzo would be Pietro's, and he'd be liberated of the need of a patron. The cloaked knives of the Della Voltas would be a fear long gone.

The mercenary's tendency to lead his men from the field cut this dream short. In late November, leading his men in the field on horseback, Ludovico de'Medici received a cannonball to a leg. He was quickly taken to medical services, who saw it necessary to amputate the injured limb. His friend Pietro stayed with him all throughout the affair, leaving only when the surgery was being performed. Like Pietro, he received many visitors while ill, often fellow commanders, who he advised on the conduct of the war. When it became clear that he would not recover from the amputation, he requested Aretino's presence, who read to him while keeping him company. The Great Devil was recalled to Heck on November 29/30th, 1526, 28 years old.

In a letter to Ludovico's young son's secretary soon after, Aretino expressed his feelings for the man and what his loss meant to him in probably the most genuine terms he'd ever write,

[...] The vigor of his spirit was incredible. Liberality meant more to him then power. He gave more to his soldiers than he kept to himself, though he too was a soldier. He endured hardship with patience and grace. He could always control his anger. All that he said he would do he did. [...]

[...] His virtues were his own, his faults those of youth. God knows that if he had lived into an age all would have known of his bounty, as I myself already had experienced it. Truly he was the most generous friend a man could ever have. [...]

Finishing,

[...] I only wish I were lying when I state that Florence and Rome will soon find what it means to not have this man among the living. Yet methinks I can already hear the Pope rejoice. He believes himself better off for having lost so great a hero.

He was certainly looking on the man with rose-tinted glasses, but his last message to Rome guarantees he was speaking from the heart, rather than with an eye to his social standing. Aretino normally always wrote with political considerations in mind, but the way this one ended was downright irresponsible for a man in his position.

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

THE LAST LAUGH

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Oh boy it's time for Germans to ruin everything yet again!

Pietro was in a bit of a rough spot. His favorite boy toy (and protector) was dead and he had lost his prominent position in Rome. The Rome thing didn't bother him as much, since he was a bit soured on the Eternal City after all his experiences there. In fact, he never wanted to go back again. In his mind, It was the Pope and his stupid war that got Ludovico killed, and almost got him killed through Pope's Datary. Now he was just angry at them, and for a time the mask of cordiality slipped from his face.

Aretino published a Giudizio, essentially a pamphlet of future predictions, lambasting the Pope and Rome, prophesying a doom soon to befall them both. Just like Pasquinades, Guidizios were not Aretino's invention, and predate his foray into the writing form significantly. Originally, Guidizios were astrological predictions, used to give voice to a writer's expectations on the state of the world in the near future. By the time Aretino wrote his, they'd become extremely politicized, serving more as vehicles for commentary on prominent officials and current events.

The Guidizio enraged Clement VII, as it came during a time of political blunder for the him and his French allies. The Colonna had staged a coup in Rome back in September, and temporarily held the city while they extorted agreements from the embattled Pope. The French and their allies in Lombardy weren't faring much better militarily, suffering defeat at the hands of Imperial forces. It was a sensitive time for Clement VII, and he couldn't afford a renowned writer like Aretino bashing him so severely.

He sent a request to Federico Gonzaga (whose court Pietro was residing in again) to arrest Aretino and transfer him into Papal custody. In a show of loyalty, Federico replied with an offer to personally execute the rouge author. The offer was merely political performance, as while offering Clement Pietro's head, Gonzaga was at the same time giving Aretino a large sum of money and sending him off to Venice, far out from the Pope's reach. The Venice of the High Renaissance was famed for its liberty, housing several refugees and dissidents from across the Italian Peninsula. It made the perfect home for a loud mouthed troublemaker with a penchant for bashing the powerful.

It was from his early days in Venice that Pietro watched his Guidizio come to pass. The Emperor's mercenary army marched on Rome in 1527, and apparently without Imperial authorization, committed one of the most infamous sackings of the Early Modern period. Having lost centralized leadership, the army razed the city after its capture, killing, raping, and looting indiscriminately. Nearly no part of the city was spared, even the catacombs underground were desecrated by soldiers. As blood flowed in the streets, the Pope could do little but watch from the near-impenetrable Castle St. Angelo. The only area of the city that was spared was the Colonna palace, whose owners had garrisoned their residence with their own soldiers and offered protection inside the walls to any Roman willing and able to pay their fee.

(Colonna Palace)

Aretino would spend nearly the entire latter half of his life residing in Venice. It's where most of his major works were published, and also where he reached his zenith of fame. By the end of his life, Pietro Aretino had become a household name across Europe, sitting alongside other prominent Renaissance Italian writers like Ariosto and Boccaccio. It was in this retirement that Pietro met his second best friend, the painter Titian. Titian held high respect for Aretino, who helped improve the former's work through his criticism while simultaneously spreading word of his skills as an artist to the likes of Emperor Charles V. Pietro even met the Emperor in person once, as he accompanied his friend Guidobaldo Della Rovere, Duke of Urbino (son and heir of the possible traitor mentioned earlier), to visit the man outside Verona in 1543. Charles was on a goodwill tour of Italy, and asked the author to accompany him on a ride on horseback, sharing lengthy conversation all the while. Aretino was invited to dinner afterward, when Charles requested his presence for the entirety of the trip, but Pietro declined, preferring to return to Venice.

As for Pietro's personal life in Venice, he led a libertine lifestyle similar to how he had under his various patrons, but with him now acting as lord of the household. Much of his staff were young men and women, making their money from running scams and stealing, just as much from Aretino himself as from random gullible Venetians. Aretino ran his house like a hippy free love commune: household members had s*x with each other, Aretino, visiting dignitaries and elite friends of their master, or really anyone wanting to stop by. Aretino himself was very prolific in these affairs, laying with both the men and women of his household. As you can imagine, many children were born from these ventures, their fathers' identities rarely known. Aretino had two daughters that we know of, but one died after moving in with her abusive husband, while the other's later life is lost to history.

On top of revenue generated from his works, Aretino continued to make money in the same way he had before Venice. He continued to blackmail, satirize, and extort the rich and powerful, receiving a steady stream of money from prominent figures wanting to make use of his talents against their opponents, or to help build up their reputations. He did so under the protection of Venice's Doge, who also helped him smooth things over with the Papacy. He reached such prominence in Venice that his doorstep practically became a revolving door that much of the elite and their representatives regularly passed through. He held communications with the English, French, and Imperial courts, as well as just about anybody who was any one in Italy.

The rest of his life was very much an anti-climax. He lived an easy life until he reached old age, never slowing his indulgence of Earthly pleasures. He would die on October 21, 1556, aged 63. He died from suffocation after reportedly falling backwards from his chair and hitting his head, having laughed too hard at a joke one of his friends told.

It's almost unfortunate he went out so comfortably after living such an inflammatory life, but at the same time it is rather fitting that he managed to weasel out of every rough spot he ever ended up in. I guess you don't make a career out of shit talking and manipulation without some knowledge of how to survive.

I didn't go much over the details of Pietro's later life in Venice, but it still does have some juicy bits, even if it wasn't as grandiose as his tenures in the various Medici households. For an example, one of his closest male servants and something of a writing apprentice to him, Nicolo Franco, grew to hate him and dedicated much of his career to badmouthing and trying to one up Aretino. Their dispute came to a head when one of Aretino's other servants tried to kill Franco for disrespecting their master. He was probably acting independently, but the attempt on his life cemented Franco's dislike of Aretino. For his part, Pietro never really took the junior writer seriously, even counseling the authorities to go easy on him after Franco's writing got him in trouble with the law. Franco would continue to try and beat down Aretino's reputation until his execution in the 1570s (once again a consequence of of his work).

There was also another time Aretino almost got busted for sexing up his male servants, but that fizzled out with nothing happening (likely due to Aretino's influence within the patrician families of Venice). He was also knighted in the order of St. John by Clement VII after the Doge and the Duke of Urbino advocated for him, but he still preferred to stay far from Rome for the rest of his days. It was nothing if not understandable after Della Volta and Ludovico.

I'll be making a source post in /h/lit sometime soon if you want to check my accuracy. I pinky-promise I didn't plagiarize anything, Breadtube, honest! Pwease don't cancel me, Mistur HBomb!

Southern Africa during 1960 - 1990 was a hotbed for civil wars and military operations between the various powers involved in the Cold War - between the supporters of the Superpowers of the USA and USSR. Among the participants of Southern Africa however, were mainly the Soviets and Cubans who conducted vast amounts of military operations to secure strength for the various communist or left-wing parties in a post-colonial Southern Africa, and opposing them were the Far-Right Capitalist nation states of the Union of South Africa, Namibia (then called South-West-Africa), and Rhodesia.

Both capitalist and communist factions spent large resources to train and equip factions which supported their worldview and ideologies, and the post-colonial Southern Africa would be the battlegrounds between these factions, in a myriad of proxy wars and civil wars.

Among these were the most infamous and fearful Theatre of conflicts for the National Party regime, the authority of white Apartheid South Africa, and the many white south africans residing in Namibia and SA, because they all were perpetually fearful of communist incursion and envelopment.

The Angolan Bush War.

FEAR OF THE RED MENACE:

Also known as the South African Border War, or the Namibian Bush War. Or the Namibian War of Independence. Or even the South African Vietnam.

The Angolan Bush War dwarfed all other conflicts and proxy wars in which the Union of South Africa was involved in and supported, including the Rhodesian Bush War, in scope, manpower and intensity. Even the Mozambique Civil War between RENAMO (the capitalists) and FRELIMO (the socialists), which the Union of SA was heavily involved in, didn't suck up the amount of military hardware and men, than that which the Angolan Bush War had.

White south africans, and the Nationale Party regime was full hardcore paranoid of the Red Menace. The fear of being consumed by communism led the regime and its people to support the most extreme and insane of measures, and similar to to the yank mccarthyism, communists were ruthlessly weeded out from both black and white populations.

But as the European colonies gradually gained their independences, the South Africans saw to their abject horror, that many of these african post-colonial states were strongly pivoting to communism/socialism or were receiving military support from the Soviets.

The fear of communism became such a paranoid phobia, that a common saying among both Apartheid-era politicians and everyday civilians were: that the Capitalists and Free-World would make their last stand on the only natural feature of south african capable of holding out against the Soviet Hordes - the Orange-River, the largest river in South Africa. If the communists busy engulfing Angola and winning the Angolan Civil War weren't stopped at the Namibian-Angolan border, they would soon swarm over to the Orange-River, because there were no mountains or strongpoints capable of stopping hordes of Soviet tanks streaming down to the Cape.

And yes, they called themselves the Free-World, the bastion against the totalitarianism of communism (the irony of which is not lost on me).

A LITTLE SUMMARY OF THE ANGOLAN BUSH WAR:

https://theafricancriminologyjournal.wordpress.com/2018/10/14/defenders-of-apartheid-the-story-of-covert-state-elimination-units-in-south-africa

The Angolan Bush War was an endless quagmire and a contest of brutality. Fought from 26 August 1966 to 21 March 1990, the Angolan Bush War was an asymmetrical war between the SADF (South African Defense Force) and SWAPO (South West Africa People's Organisation)

Strangest of all wars in Southern Africa at this period in time, was that the main benefactor for Communist/Socialist factions and forces, wasn't the Soviet Union, but Cubans!! Being the closest point in Southern Africa, with a vast coastline to smuggle themselves into, Cubans played a key role in training leftest forces in Angola, and were the most formidable foottroops present in Western Africa. The Soviets would have a far larger role in equipping and supplying Angola, but were mostly physically present with ground forces in eastern african warzones, like Mozambique Civil War.

Thus, Cuba, SWAPO and the SADF would become bitter enemies for this colossal 24 fricking year conflict which had endless drama, in terms of a battle line which changed constantly, and Namibian and Angolan civilians caught in the middle. But SWAPO and the SADF weren't the only belligerents present in the Angolan Bush War, it was a free-for-all, sometimes 3 front war between a myriad of fricktions!!

Colonial Portugal aided the Union of South Africa, similar to as how SA supported portugal in their attempts to hold onto Mozambique, their last imperial treasure, as the communists had effectively seized Angola away from them.

The ANC, the same ANC of today in SA, was also present in limited numbers of guerillas!! South African blacks would smuggle themselves from SA to Angola in order to join the leftest factions in Namibia and Angola.

And lastly the most weirdest state involved in this long absurd war was Isreal! Being another global pariah state, the Union of SA was on of the very few global allies and trading partners they had, and Isreal had no stake in any of Southern Africa, but still sold weaponry and ammunition to SA.

The Angolan Bush War truly was the Vietnam of Africa, an endless multi-decade quagmire of war, where multiple Cold War factions involved themselves into to the civil wars of nation states, only for the proxy war to expand and expand into an international conflict.

PARRALLES TO THE VIETNAM WAR:

There is simply too much to talk about regarding the Angolan Bush War, so i'll keep the scope upon the subject of how South Africans to their horror, found out how the Angolans had captured white special forces, ad paraded them of live television for the world to see.

This was a dramatic watershed moment for white South Africans, to lose faith and trust in their government, who kept a strict and near absolute censorship of their military activities and operations from the civilian population.

The parallels of this moment and the yank war in Vietnam, was in the famous Tet Offensive. When the Viet Cong threw down an enormous multi-front attack with several armies against Yank GI forces. The yank government had lied continiously about the success of the Vietnam war to their civilian population, and dissent had grown due to the very long nature and casualties of the Vietnam war.

The Tet Offensive saw the live shattering of the lies the Amerikan government had told their population about the supposed false reality that America was winning, and that the Vie Cong was defeated, when on life television, a vast army was assaulting the cities they held. The incredible irony in hindsight of the Tet Offensive, was the yank GI forces won a near completely one-sided victory against the Viet Cong and successfully repelled them, and shattered their armies.

But the victory was irrelevant. Civilian faith in their government was forever lost, and would have direct political consequences in America evacuating from Vietnam.

CENSORSHIP AND DARKNESS:

Similarly, when in 1985 May, when Angola paraded a white South African captured men, it shattered faith and trust in the NP Regime.

In 1985, there was extreme censorship in Namibia and South Africa. The government controlled what television and films were allowed to be watched, INCLUDING for its white population. Both to curb the spread of cummunism, and to prevent SA blacks and coloureds from transferring ideas of independence and equal voting rights. The NP regime also wanted to curb the ANC's ability to communicate successes like succesful bombings of bridges or railtracks or whatever.

Many foreign films were banned from America, where blacks were depicted as having equal rights in America, and any media critical of the regime was banished into the shadowrealm SA had a rather poor selection of good films before Democratization in 1993.

Written letters were intercepted in the SA Post Office if it was suspected that banned material was being discussed.

But most significant of all, was that the ENTIRE Angolan Bush War was heavily censored. In Vietnam a great many reporters were allowed, usually under conditions, and also censored, by the USA militray, but in stark contrast to SA in the Angolan Bush War, there were never ever any reporters allowed, only the most flaccid pro militray stories was ever reported. The consequences, was the the gov lied through propaganda how the war in Angola was proceeding! Only after democratization in 1993, was civilians aware of the great sacrifice young white men had made in their name, always sworn to absolute secrecy.

Many south african white soldiers had to suffer in complete silence their PTSD-induced war horrors without ever being allowed to discuss their sufferings to friends or family. Only after 1993 when ALL of the NP regime secrecy was declassified, was documentaries about the Angolan Bush War allowed to surface, and a great renaissance of books were written about Angolan and white south african veterans whom had made peace after never really hating one another.

https://journal-veterans-studies.org/articles/10.21061/jvs.v6i1.147

Point being, that ordinary south africans were in such absolute darkness about the reality of the Angolan Bush War, that the parading of South African captured on foreign international press was a supreme humiliation and embarrassment for the Nationale Party regime, and would have direct political consequences upon the change of leadership in the following 7 years, and the eventual capitulation of the regime in 1992 to the ANC's demands for equal rights, and international coalition who sanctioned Apartheid South Africa.

RECCES:

The South African Special Forces Brigade, colloquially known as the Recces, was the Union of South Africa's principal special operations unit, and their equivalent to Delta Forces or the Navy Seals. They specialized in counter-insurgency operations, usually behind enemy lines. They had the highest level of prestige amongst all of the SADF branches, and their training was without peer in its ferocity. Only the absolute cream of the crop made the RECCES. Only about 8% of recruits who ATTEMPTED to undergo South African special forces training, passed the course.

Recces carried out a number of combat operations during the Rhodesian Bush War, the Mozambican Civil War, but most of their operations was during the Angolan Bush War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Special_Forces

In the Angolan Bush War, they basically covered themselves in glory by conducting many many successful clandestine operations, to shot down important planes behind enemy lines, going full Rambo in the african bush or Angola and Namibia. And they still exist today!

https://web.archive.org/web/20180220164358/http://www.recce.co.za/frontpage/recruitment

Anyways they were all super duper toughguys and were basically the armed branch of South African Catachans

OPERATION ARGON:

But this drama is about the Recces' most infamous failure. A repeat of an event which happened in 12 Jan 1976, when Angolan communist forces paraded white South African POWs in front of their media. There were regular armed SADF military forces, and the NP regime gov had promised never to conduct military operations like that again to its population. The men in the Youtube video were at least treated well and later traded.

Operation Argon was one of the many spearhead operations conducted behind enemy lines. A South African Daphné-class submarine carried a group of 9 Recce men undetected and underwater to the Angolan coast.

The Daphné-class submarines of SA was bought from France at that time. I don't know which sub took them, but I believe it was either the SAS Assegaai (zulu spear) or the SAS Emily Hobhouse. 3 such subs were built and bought from France.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAS_Umkhonto

The 9-man team of Recces left Saldanha Bay (in the sub) and travelled to a spot some way off the Angolan coast near its border with Zaire (the country North of Angola).

The team had to travel 12 kilometres by boat from the sub, then a further 21km hiked by foot. Because of the great distance needed to travel, they could not accomplish this venture in one day, and had to sleep one night inbetween launching from the submarine, and carrying out their objectives. Which is where the apocalyptic shitshow would start for these young men.

The Recces landed on the coast at night on 20 May following an advance scouting party sent to gather intelligence on the beach where the party would land. But they were obstructed by bad weather and waves, and the Recces had to launch their boats further from the shore than anticipated, thus they were already behind schedule in the start of their mission.

A further screwup occurred when the Recces in their tiny boats appraoched shore, and Captain Wynand Du Toit noticed a small fishing vessel in the area of the landing zone and that the occupants were on shore around a fire. This forced the team to wait offshore until the boat left the area, causing the team to be 3 hours behind schedule, and causing the danger of being detected growing.

Upon landing the boats were hidden and a rendezvous point set up. The men climbed a bank and followed a route that that detoured around a village, causing them to lose yet another hour of invaluable time.

As darkness and fatigue overcame the, the team sought a good hiding place for the night, and hid their sleep within dense growth of plants. The next morning, to their absolute horror, the Recces discovered that what had looked like a dense jungle in the darkness of night in which they had hidden, was in reality nothing an island of dense plant growth within a sea of flat grass and crops. Basically they were in a tussle of bushes in the open.

What is more, the dew from the night before had cause their boot tracks to be obscenely visible, running along their previous route all the way to their hiding spot. A few hours later, a small FAPLA patrol could be seen following the tracks in the dew that they had left earlier. The team watched as the patrol withdrew, and then came back with a larger patrol which passed the hide.

But the horrible bad luck didn't stop there: the aerial photograps provided to the Recces did not detect well hidden enemy bases just 900 meters away from the Recces' hiding spot!!! The enemy People's Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA) bases was well hidden from the air, but the young men could clearly see the activity from SWAPO soldiers less than a kilometer away. The Recces spread out in a perimeter in their tiny island of vegetation, lying down in their camouflage, sweating blood in fear and hoping they could somehow make it to night without being spotted by an entire enemy base!

A young child saw the bootprints in the dew and went to to warn the FAPLA. By this time, the dew had evaporated somewhat, and the tracks made badly visible, but the FAPLA soldiers knew that enemies were present. Twice the enemy would pass within meters of their hiding spot, the Recces lying still like the grave. Hoping against hope they would not be spotted, as this operation had wen completely FUBAR.

Meanwhile, a second patrol approached the hide from the other direction, and opened up heavy fire on the hidden position., out of suspicion. As RPGs struck their position, Captain Du Toit ordered the withdrawal of his troops. They had no choice but to double back on the trail that brought them to this position the previous night. Two of the men were wounded as they exited the trees.

The team turned north, pursued by FAPLA soldiers. Another group of Angolan soldiers advanced from the west, flanking the Recces so that they could only go east now. They could see a group of trees, but needed to cross 40 yards (37 m) of waist-high grass to get to this cover. Du Toit took two men and made his way through the grass as the rest of the team hid in the thicket. The small team drew fire as over 30 troops moved onto the exposed position. Two South Africans (Corporal Rowland Liebenberg and Sergeant Louis van Breda) were killed and Du Toit was wounded and later captured.

https://x.com/ModernConflict/status/1395743225193848833

POLITICAL AND DIPLOMATIC CONSEQUENCES:

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00965R000706340003-2.pdf

News grew with momentum like a snowball rolling down hill. Outside of the cataclysmic drama home in South Africa, with citizens clamouring for their gov to explain WTF south african men were doing so far into Angola, there was also diplomatic trouble with SA, Angola and Zaire.

The Angolans believed that Zaire was in a secret pact with SA because the Zaire were not as ardently communist. Here is a document from Burgerland CIA discussing the event

Zaire (modern Congo) was believed by the Angolans to operate with Pretoria South Africa, to do a double clandestine operation to destroy and capture oil-refinery systems at Cabinda, the place which was the target for the Recce commandos. Zaire had previous land claims to the oil-rich Cabinda enclave.

This caused tension between South Africa and Zaire, who were mad that the South Africans had inadvertently dragged the Congolese into their war with Angola, basically a diplomatic nuclear event. Zaire had previously been neutral to the pariah state of Apartheid South Africa, and this unintended event basically fricked their relationship hence.

WOUNDED:

While Du Toit, the Recce commando still wounded and alive ,lay on his stomach, he was appraoched by APLA soldiers And, thinking he was also dead, stripped his equipment – only then did they realise he was alive and shot him again through the neck. He remained awake with wounds in his neck, shoulder and arm as the FAPLA soldiers began to savagely beat him. After being severely roughed up, he was finally taken to Cabinda for medical treatment then to a Luanda hospital.

The remaining six Recce soldiers carefully made their way north, where they regrouped and were eventually picked up, to be returned safely to South Africa. Their escape was due in part to being ignored after the Angolans captured Du Toit.

Back in South Africa, there was great political pressure against the NP regime to get Du Toit back to SA. But when the Union of South Africa requested a prisoner exchange for Du Toit, and the retrieval of the 2 bodies of the shot Recce commandos, the Angolans responded with outrage and communication would be very little.

Du Toit would endure great hardship as a prisoner of war. The Red Cross facilitated Du Toit's wife visiting him in prison on three separate occasions. du Toit was finally to be released on 7 September 1987 after some 837 days of solitary confinement in an Angolan prison in a complicated prisoner exchange arrangement brokered by Jean-Yves Ollivier. The exchange took place in Maputo, Mozambique where Du Toit was swapped for two ANC members and 133 Angolan soldiers.

AFTERMATH:

I can only offer anecdotal evidence for here. My parent's generation was shocked to the core by the news, and the humiliation of Du Toit being paraded on the 1980s version of HD TV news. Many women my mother's age made letters to their leaders and politicans to trade him back, because apparently he was a handsome young man at that time, and afrikaner women were horrified by the display.

Trust in the government was very low, as an extreme counter event to SA propaganda had occurred proving the 20 year war was nothing but a quagmire.

South Africa always acted with what they believed was the USA's blessing as their silent ally, but when this drama came out, the USA was absolutely silent, and made no attempts to help pressure the Angolans to release Du Toit. This event demonstrated that USA was drifting away from having Apartheid SA as an ally, which was becoming increasingly unpopular within Burgerland itself.

Here is a 90-minute documentary interview with Du Toit about his experiences in Operation Argon if any of you Dramatards give a shit.

We need more of these people pic.twitter.com/H9ZdfSI5qv

— rosey🌹 (@thechosenberg) December 7, 2023

Context

Picture of the post:

Drama

people forgetting that these “unaware” people aren't value neutral apoliticals. the average person has internalised white supremacist and patriarchal beliefs. So being clueless about cultural discourse means they essentially agree, and are bystanders to oppression

Actually I think you just don't realize that there's a lot of people who don't live their life online and really don't keep up with whatever twitter is meltingdown over. Try logging out for a while, you might like it!

actually i was referring to the consistent discrimination i face for being visibly queer, visibly brown, visibly neurodivergent. Offline.

"visibly queer, visibly brown, visibly neurodivergent". This is why you have no friends. You are so focused on your own identity that you no longer have the tiniest idea of how to connect to humans.

their definition of apolitical is just everything that has been “normalized”'in the environment they grew up in, which is not always a good thing

which is why a key part of g*mergate was the war against queer/race representation. being apolitical inevitably leads to minorities being banished from public life. scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds etc etc

It has been NINE FRICKING YEARS. Let it die holy frick

yes let's just ignore an important cultural event that has had considerable influence on todays online landscape for better or for worse

I've never heard a person mention g*mergate that wasn't terminally online

I'm sorry, but this is not appealing to me.

Himbo propaganda at its finest. There nothing appealing about someone divorced from social issues because these conversations are not just happening on social media spaces but in news media too. Man is living under the heaviest rock known to man.

Yeah, exactly. Like it's one thing to not catch a reference to an internet joke, but being unaware of a genocide that's dominating news? No, thank you, I'm good on that.

Noooo you have to care about events that are 7000 miles away noooo

only white ppl can do this

minority groups are the ones actually affected by most of the discourse. I'd even stretch to say that only white cis men can do this.

just simply not true. you could literally not watch the news and disengage from social media like anyone else, especially if u live in murica.

Spoken like someone who hasn't had slurs screamed in their face for no reason. Lmao please sit this one out.

noooo i have to be terminally online because some people still say BIPOC noooo

This reeks of privilege. It's one thing to be unaware of the latest meme or other unimportant trends but to be unaware of the literal genocide happening right now is unforgivable. I can never stand people who live in their own privileged bubble.

Bro I don't know from the river to the sea and I actually use Twitter every day and youtube 24/7 and keep up with politics more than the average person...... I'm privileged for that?🤣🤣🤣 this is some stupid butt shit

noooo you cant just go outside and not care about the news noooo

Chronically online people being surprised by the mass populace is so funny to me.

This does not represent the mass populace

just because you live online or twitter doesn't mean the mass percentage of people do the same.

I did not suffer through 2 months of bud light and pro noun jokes at work just to be told it's something only terminally online people care about

The truth is that the mass populace is chronically online, has been since COVID.

Chronically online take

None of my friends over 25 are online anymore 🤣 just me they are hiking and living and I'm online learning useless stuff that non online people don't care about at all

>I'm online learning useless stuff that non online people don't care about at all

One day i will found someone who appreciates my vast austic knowledge of niche internet drama

Young people blissfully unaware of the mainstream online culture are usually hard working, happy and a pleasure to be around

Only people I have heard that are like this age foreign students coming to the US through scholarships.

This guy doesn't talk to normal people

Ironically the idea that the ”perfect person” is the opposite extreme of whatever being chronically online is is in itself a chronically online take. I live in a small rural town full of people like this and let me fricking tell you it is NOT good.

No actually, being fully unaware of and uninterested in social and political developments both local and worldwide makes you deathly fricking uninteresting to be around and morally lazy as heck. Not to mention how privileged you need to be for this which of course they all are.

I'm as put off by the chronically online as the next person, but I promise you the better alternative is not the opposite. The better alternative IMO is to be aware but to know which battles to choose, to care but not to your own detriment and to take action where it matters.

>I'm as put off by the chronically online as the next person

>but I promise you the better alternative is not the opposite

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PART 1: THE DESIRE FOR THE HUMAN CONDITION

With 20mg Ambien + 30mg Benzo (I think i redosed but I forgot)+ marijuana in my system, I've managed to find a few slivers of happiness within. If you're seated and focused on a singular task, it can be beneficial. It feels like I have the vocabulary of an Oxford dictionary editor and the words float off my fingers with minimal resistance.

Ideas! I want to write poems to S.H, I want to get an earbrow piercing. You'd be surprised at the weird things your mind will do on benzos. I've received packages I forgot about, and some contain items I don't need or never would have bought like fancy lotion and Durex invisible condoms. I don't know what to do with these items.

I haven't been without anxiety, however. The no-gf feel hit particularly intensely, and it had me researching whether our capitalistic world has any solutions. It does! They're called escorts. Yes, in the strictest sense, escorts are paid to accompany you for an agreed-upon timespan. As one would expect, they treat you like a partner and are pleasant to you. It's 100% legal. In the modern day, "escort" is code for prostitutes, but there are still women offering the first option.

I'd like to discuss the morality of making use of non-sexual escorts, and how you feel about it.

Get a therapist!

My experiences with therapists in the past have been less than stellar. This has left me skeptical of the profession. Sure, there are good therapists, but they are exceptionally hard to find. I think most are just extroverts who enjoy talking to different people, but they have very little insight into the human condition.

My doctor connected me to a psychiatrist, and I was told they'd get back to me this week. They did not and when I tried to call a few times they didn't pick up. Thus, I am left to endure the weekend. I am abandoned and rejected once again. The two main threats to avoid:

*no cutting

*no tomfoolery on my phone while on benzos (I downloaded Tinder and Badoo no matches so I deleted)

I stocked up on wound dressing and bandages in anticipation of a bloody blade session, but I haven't had any emotional spikes today. The thoughts definitely arose - I wanted to give myself the greatest cut ever today, and I had plenty of reasons to. A tornado of every rejection I've ever experienced in the realm of life twisted into an invisible mental monster. The Great Cut shall be achieved, however, maybe tomorrow. We'll make our first entrance into the fat layer.

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Benzo break from Holly!

On pilled up calmness I can think of horrible things I didn't want to happen as a child but did. A lot of dad stuff is coming up, like my dad making me shower with him, beating me with a belt, or the time my dad called me to his bed to essentially watch him keep yourself safe (he didn't die). It all just happened and still can't figure out how to integrate it into the story of my life.

• car accident = does/will not compute

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Now that you have the necessary background to tackle the topic, I can get to the crux of the matter - what is the morality of paying for companionship?

WEIGHING THE MORALITY OF NON-SEXUAL ESCORTING

WHAT IS NON-SEXUAL ESCORTING?

I'm going to be darn specific about what I'm referring to. The kind of escort I desire operates by accepting currency from clients who desire her time. This is the technical term for escorting, and when performed correctly there are no legal ramifications. It is not a crime to play for one's time. You are at liberty to pay a woman to go on a date with you or accompany you for a holiday.

I am deeply considering such non-sexual service. However, I'm plagued by endless moral questions festering in my brain. I'll try to best explain them now. Sorry for the typos or nonsense that arises, I am feeling fantastically wavy at present. If there are dumb ideas, I beg you to point them out. I want your help to think through this topic with as much clarity as possible

JUSTIFICATIONS FOR ESCORTING

As is the case with most choices in life, some are good and some are shit. It is up to you to decide which road you will take. So here are my justifications for becoming an escortcel:

1. Loneliness

Well, here's the obvious one - I'm lonely. As an extreme introvert, I'm not looking for big friendship group. Just one person who I can connect with, accept, and be honest with. I had that with S.H., but by sharing romantic relationship desires with her I permanently changed the relationship. She's more guarded, less affectionate, I don't think she wants to do it anymore, which is understandable. It's Joever on that front. I ruined everything.

https://rdrama.net/post/224434/i-told-my-friend-i-have

Now I am giga lonely with no friend group. There's a nightclub down the street. I've read some comments from residents online trying to have it shut down because it's a den of drugs. I'm thinking that going to the club on benzos may make relaxed enough to enter. But I wouldn't be able to drink and I wouldn't know what to do. Most importantly, I am 5 foot 1. I think you need to be somewhat attractive for bars and clubs to be successful.

So, we've established that I am in need of some of the services offered by escorts. This includes:

• affection

• attention

• cuddling and feeling love

• play Starfield together

• no chance of rejection (so long I don't do something crazy to her)

• being nice and making me feel wanted and worthy of human contact

It's the last one I'm mostly curious about. I want a date with a girl who's going to be nice to me and will treat me with affection, as though she is happy to see me. I know it's fake, but like I said, if you can't afford the Bentley, you settle for the Toyota. According to her site, she doesn't meet first clients at their homes, so they either go to her house or they book a hotel first. That is something I am willing to do, as my bedsheets are bloody from self-harm cuts leaking at night.

2. Experience

You only live once. I know I'll never get a real girlfriend or a wife. It's impossible and anyone who's had a look at nature knows this. Some percentage of all creatures will be wholly rejected by the opposite s*x in r-selected species.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory#r-selection

I'm an incel. Some of us will be. It's impossible for 0 incels to exist unless women are forced into marriage. I think people here are smart enough to understand the personality meme is shit because we all know evil fellas never have a problem with women. I'm not going to go full blackpill and say my wrist ratio has darned me. But I will point out the absolute obvious and state that women DESPISE short men, and you can find countless online communities of women stating exactly this. You can even find scientific research outlining just how fricked short men are.

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?type=pdf

Research has repeatedly shown than women prefer men who are relatively taller than they are. It is possible that for most women there is a certain minimal threshold of height, after which they will consider a male as a potential s*x partner, and thus men above that height will end up with similar numbers of s*x partners.”

But mofos still wanna gaslamp 5ft1 neighbors instead of letting them accept the nature of reality and move on

There's nothing wrong with being undesirable. Some men can't sing. Others are shit at running. A rare few are incompatible with women. It doesn't make you a bad person any more than being 5 foot 1 makes you a bad person. It also doesn't make women bad either. Women have a HIGH cost for s*x, so it is in their best interest to be selective. And I'm definitely not worthy. Indulging in copim around this topic just prolongs the healing process.

With a non-sexual escort, I'll get to experience what it's like to have a GF, even if it's fake.

Most, if not all, the physical dangers of prostitution are absent.

The risk of STDs is gone if no sexual contact takes place. I am terrified of getting herpes, which afflicts 67% of all human beings around the world. This is one thing most folks do not understand when they go to clubs and make out with random women or have s*x with them. If I'm an incel then goddamit I should at least benefit from a clean bill of health. Imagine being an incel with an STD.

3. You're still prostituting

The main argument against escorting is that it is prostitution. You are still buying a woman. I disagree. By definition, it is not prostitution. There is no s*x being exchanged, nor are any s*x acts as part of the service. Of course, it could be argued that there is a sexual element to it, as the escort has to feign interest, and some degree of attraction (she can't sit there looking outwardly disgusted by your existence). However, this is a far cry from a woman actually having s*x with a man she would normally never touch.

In such a situation, the buyer is not a John, nor is the seller a Hooker.

4No dignity to preserve

Nobody has to know. It's beyond joever anyway. I'm never getting a girlfriend or having a marriage. I'll never experience what it's like to be romantically loved or desired. I'm an incel. Nobody is going to physically desire me. I'm physically scarred beyond belief. The gaping lacerations on my thighs right now would make surgeons yack, never mind a nice girl. It's joever and it always has been since the day I reached 5 foot 1 and never grew an inch more.

What lady thinks “when I start a family, I PRAY my husband is mentally ill and 5 foot 1. That's the kind of man who can protect me and lead the home.” None! I failed every aspect of masculinity.

On Reddit, you'll find plenty of women who say they would NEVER date a man who used such a service. Lucky for me, I'll never have to explain it!

THOUGHTS FROM REDDIT

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/c5meds/sex_workers_of_reddit_have_you_had_any_customers

I don't really understand the concept. Paying someone to be nice to me and pretend to like me would just make me feel terrible. At best, I'd think it was sad if I knew someone did that and I'd think they probably lacked basic social skills. I would feel like we were not compatible because I don't see friendship as something that can be purchased.

(For reference, I would not be friends with or in a relationship with someone who had purchased services from a s*x worker because I don't see sexual consent as something to be bought/sold/traded/bartered/etc.)

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskWomen/comments/567mvh/how_would_you_feel_about_a_nonsexual_escort

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskWomen/comments/2at84h/do_you_think_its_pathetic_if_a_man_visits_an

UNRELATED BONUS: A woman spends several messages arguing with an actual s*x worker about why her industry is vile

highlight:

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskWomen/comments/23b1e6/could_you_date_somebody_who_had_paid_an_escort

DETERRENCES FOR ESCORTING

I no longer identify as a feminist, (I am an anti-hierarchy, anti-suffering egalitarian). My current disposition is that both animals and humans deserve to be protected from suffering. My politics? Libertarian with liberal views on the environment.

1. Prostitution is evil

The last point I wish to make is that with a non-sexual escort, you don't face many of the harms that come with the industry. These are factors several folks like to overlook, particularly liberals and s*x buyers. I struggle to understand why. Even 5 minutes of research on prostitution makes it obvious how vile this industry is both legal and otherwise.

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Benzo break from Holly!

Yesterday I took 200mg of THC and 2 benzos. I listened to half an album before I blacked out. I woke up in bed depantsed. The cookies were very yummy and I want to buy more at the dispensary. They also have awesome THC drinks and other goodies but I'm terrified of people so I barely look around, I wish I could see everything its so cool.

Here's the thing: After consuming the cookies and benzos last night, I sat at my PC for a while. I knew I took benzos. I knew they made me feel more sober than I truly am. Yet I still went downstairs and redosed, stumbling like a drunkard the whole way.

The lesson to learn here is that 200mg of THC in an edible in one go is too much. They were two cookies of 100mg each and I ate both.

Lastly, I think the cashier thought I had stolen something. I was looking at some rolling papers near the cashier desk and I was about to take what looked like a blunt, but it wasn't so I put it back and went to the fridge to see what edibles they had. My hands were in my pockets naturally, but when I turned to the cashier till, the lady there was looking at me a bit suspiciously. I think she thought I nicked rolling paper.

Next time I will nick rolling papers on principle.

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By hiring a non-sexual escort I could still be indirectly funding pimping and human trafficking. It's all connected. I know prohibition is frowned upon (muh alcohol mafia!) but some things should be prohibited because there's no way for them to exist morally. That is the case with prostitution. Inasmuch as you can find your 100 Westsern women who just have a high s*x drive and don't mind having s*x for money, the truth is that pretty much every prostitute DOESN'T WANT TO BE THERE AND WANTS TO LEAVE. This applies in legal and illegal circumstances. LOOK AT THESE STATS: from Melissa Farley who did research around the world:

• 81% of legal brothel workers self-reported that they wanted to leave prostitution but can't

• 5% of prostituted individuals make the choice freely

Wanna roll the dice and hope you deal with the 5%? Melissa Farley also points out that legal s*x work attracts illegal s*x work:

Areas with legal prostitution are often magnets for s*x trafficking rings and illegal prostitution. This is uncovered by Farley's research in Nevada which reveals that although Nevada has counties that allow for legal prostitution, 90% of the state's prostitution occurs outside of legally designated areas, including Las Vegas which is a major destination for s*x trafficking. I suspect that the legal brothels attract customers which allows for a black market to grow alongside it which offers cheaper alternatives for the influx of potential buyers. This is not a remotely unique situation. The Netherlands, which I've previously discussed, has been listed by the UN as one of the top destinations for human trafficking. This situation has led to the former mayor of Amsterdam stating that “We realize that this hasn't worked, that trafficking in women continues […] Women are now moved around more, making police work more difficult.” This information is further corroborated by a study published by World Development which finds that “Countries with legalized prostitution are associated with higher human trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited” (summary from Harvard Law and International Development Society). Hence, on average, “countries with legalized prostitution report a greater incidence of human trafficking inflows”.

So if I support a legal action (non-sexual escorting), I will still be contributing to illegal prostitution.

2. I might traumatize someone

This is the biggest factor for me. There are plenty of unpleasant jobs. Many guys are garbage collectors to help feed their families It is not nice to smell the garbage. Nevertheless, unwanted s*x is r*pe. Simple and plain. If you have s*x with a prostitute, it isn't because she wants to have s*x with you. It's because she needs money. The s*x is an unwanted middle-man she's enduring due to the economic power men wield.

She's not consenting to s*x, she's consenting to money. If she could take the money without the s*x, she would. She doesn't want to frick you

What about an unwanted conversation or evening? I am seeking to pay for her company because I lack the ability to do that for free, whether it be due to my personality or looks (or some combination). If all the women in regular society don't want to spend time with me, why would this woman?

The truth is that she doesn't want to and would want to be doing anything else. Unfortunately, I'd be paying her to stay. Plenty of us go to jobs we don't like, and very few of us would sincerely call it torture.

But what about this woman? How am I affecting her psychologically? Flipping burgers at a job you hate doesn't have the same emotional impact of sharing intimacy for money. I was playing a game called He Fricked The Girl Out of Me, and one thing it pointed out is that every time someone did something for her, she felt like he owed them s*x. That is what s*x work did to her mind.

I also think of shame as a harm both for me and her. She will see me, observe my hideousness, and it's inevitable that she will feel some despair that her life has come to this point - pleasing ugly men that no other women want to see. How can she not feel shame?!

So what would my purchasing of her time do to her? It's clearly not neutral. She would be pretending to be my girlfriend for all intents and purposes. Would she continue through life believing that she owes the illusion of love to anyone who shows her affection?

CONCLUSION

I don't think I'll be buying a non-sexual escort. It's a clear-cut case of making your problems someone else's problems. I wouldn't buy an escort either because I'm not a male feminist.

I can't quite eloquently state why, but it's something to do with the effects I may have on her psyche. Hurting others is yucky, especially if you consider the trauma it may cause.

Psyche! This is actually a Jacob Zuma Post! PART 4! That's right straggots, u vil read ze Longpost and zu vil be happy

I've read countless articles by non-safrican liberal r-slurs about the 2021 riots, and the amount of misinformation and r-sluration western journos have regarding anything RSA related truly is astonishing. I've said it before: but the amount they get wrong goes well beyond liberal bias or any agenda pushing, they genuinely don't fricking understand.

Because the primary cause, first and foremost of the 2021 Riots in SA, is and fricking always has been Jacob fricking Zuma.

To Summarize where we were at: The last time we dramatards visited Zuma, he had refused to fricking give way to Cyril ramaphosa (current SA prez), who had defeated him in the 2018 ANC Conference, where factions were split, but Zuma ultimately failed to secure leadership of the ANC party. It was a momentous event, and the media fricking followed the ANC Conference like shadows, every hour there was a twitter update of the event (a relatively new phenomenon for safricans).

Well Zuma and his supporters got turbo cucked, because the presidency was the only thing keeping Zuma from prison, he had made too many enemies, and his corruption alongside the Guptas had lost him too many allies within the ANC itself. In 2018 Zuma made the worst attempt at a Coup ever in history, when he tried to coerce military heads of RSA to back him, only to let the cowardice and lack of communication backfire, his entire administration being Putin-levels of corrupt and imbecilic and the entire coup attempt amounting to

FINALLY, on February 18 2018, Zuma resigned from the presidency, seeing that he had exhausted all attempts at grappling onto power, and had to be metaphorically dragged out of the office. (Can u guyz imagine if fricking Trump remained in the White house till fricking mid Feb??)

On 16 March 2018, a month after Zuma resigned from the presidency, the NPA (South Africa's National Prosecuting Authority) announced that he would ace prosecution of a metric shitload of corruption charges.

CORRUPTION CHARGES - ZONDO COMMISSION:

https://www.news24.com/news24/opinions/analysis/the-state-capture-inquiry-what-you-need-to-know-20180819

Because of the magnitude of investigating a president, a special Judicial Commission of Inquiry was stablished in January 2018 to investigate Zuma, for allegations of state capture, corruption, and fraud.

The media and public would come to know this as either the "State Capture Commission" for South Africans kept talking about that Zuma had committed Staatskaping or "State Capture", as in Zuma had held the fricking nation hostage lol (we are a very dramatic bunch)

The other name the commission was known as was the Zondo Comission - named after the head Judge who acted as chairperson, and and spearheaded the investigation.

And guyz, hollllllllllleeeeeeeeey frick, was EVEN THIS inquiry a typical South African brand of burning trashfire shitshow.

The Zondo Commission took 2.5 fricking years to finish, received extensions, and cost the taxpayer an astronomical R 1 billion wat de fok

https://mg.co.za/news/2022-04-28-zondo-granted-eighth-extension-as-part-four-of-state-capture-report-is-awaited

Needless to say the Zondo Comission was as inept, incompetent and corrupt as the very man they were investigating lmoa

Anyways long boring story short: it took until December 2020 for the Zondo comission to do its thing, and finally present its case for the national prosecution against Zuma.

And the corruption trial against JZ was to begin 2021.

ZUMA'S LEGAL BATTLE:

From the very beginning of his trial in early 2021, Zuma was a toxic little slimeball He went to great lengths to defy the court and basically act like the RSA equivalent of the GROUNS guy I'm not joking at all.

Here is some examples of his arrogance and misbehaviors:

https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/zondo-commission-to-lay-criminal-charges-against-jacob-zuma-for-walking-out-of-inquiry-01296852-383c-4a71-8f3d-c43c4fb50569

Zuma literally just walked out of the building after lunch, because the judge refused to recuse him!

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-01-28-final-order-concourt-rules-jacob-zuma-must-appear-and-answer-questions-at-zondo-commission

THEN, after staying away for like a month, the court ruled: no actually you can't just hide away you little shit.

https://allafrica.com/stories/202102010791.html

Zuma then tried stalling for as long as possible, so that he did not have to testify in front of Zondo and the other 6 commisioners.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-56073199

By late February 2021, the Comission started calling Zuma's behaviour as contempt of court.

ZUMA IMPRISSONED FOR CONTEMPT OF COURT:

On 29 June 2021, Zuma was sentenced to 15 months in prison for contempt of court, after his refusal to appear before the commission, and using everything in his legal team's power to prevent him from going to the principle's office.

After it became clear at the end of March that Zuma would physically refuse to present himself in front of the commission's court, he was given an ultimatum: he had until 4 July to get his butt in court or the SAPS would arrest him. And he of course refused

When police arrived at Zuma's house to arrest him, there were fricking armed Zuma supporters barring his way!

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/south-africas-zuma-hand-himself-over-police-foundation-2021-07-07

Luckily a bloodbath was avoided when Zuma finally decided to go quietly. Zuma challenged his detention on 8 July in the Pietermaritzburg High Court on the grounds of health but this was rejected.

UNREST BEGINS: 9 July 2021

https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2021-07-09-millions-of-rand-of-kzn-infrastructure-damaged-in-violent-free-jacob-zuma-protests

The very next day, when Zuma was taken to prison, civil unrest began sweeping the nation, as hardcore Zuma supporters, especially Zulus, began to take to the streets. And the province hardest and most immediately hit with unrest was KwaZulu-Natal, the homeland of Zulus.

====(from article)

The KwaZulu-Natal government pleaded for calm on Friday amid protests believed to be part of a violent “Free Jacob Zuma and shut down KZN” campaign in which millions of rand worth of infrastructure have been damaged.

The police were under pressure when responding to several fiery protests, disruptions to traffic and truck blockades since the early hours of Friday morning from Empangeni on the north coast to the province's south coast.

“Several vehicles were reportedly stoned and millions worth of public infrastructure damaged, resulting in many commuters not being able to reach their places of work.

====(end quote)

In the 1st day the entire nation and including the KwaZulu-Natal admin was completely caught off guard, and didn't understand where these protests were coming from, as violence broke out over dozens of cities and towns.

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/south-african-police-arrest-27-over-protests-linked-zuma-jailing-2021-07-10

Roads were blocked with trucks and burning tires, vehicles were attacked with stones and debris, and 28 rioters arrested on the 1st day.

RIOTS CONTINUE AND ESCALATE:

The riots continued till 11 July. Rioting was not unusual in SA, and happened a great deal where poverty and corruption rubbed off of one another, people displayed their pleasure at gov officials not paying their salaries by burning tires and blocking roads, and protested their municipalities not giving the locals their water and electricity by upending trash into offices. These protests/riots would peter out after a day or two however.

But it quickly became apparent that the 2021 Riots was much more violent and intense in nature. For 5 days straight the violence, road-blocking and random assaults didn't only not end, but intensified. Police, ambulances and firefighting services quickly became overwhelmed.

Finally by 12 July 2021, a frenzy was reached in Kwazulu-Natal, when rioting turned quickly large scale province-wide looting, as people realized the provincial and local police forces had been completely overwhelmed by the scale of the unrest, and their incapacity to arrest more than a dozen people per city per day. Looting of course took place since 9 July, but after 12 July, it was like somebody ripped of the watertap and let the stream funnel.

Hundreds of people would descent upon their local CCD district and local supermarkets and just fricking pilfer everything in sight. Before 12 July, shopping attendants would fend off robbers but after 12 July, all cashiers, attendants and customer service people basically bolted in the face of zombie hordes

https://mg.co.za/news/2021-07-12-businesses-reel-as-zumaunrest-rages

====(article)

A number of businesses and services have closed their doors as violent unrest spread across KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, leaving a number of dead and wounded civilians and looted and burned shops in their wake. Initially constrained to townships and the eThekwini central business district, the violence in KwaZulu-Natal has spread across Pietermaritzburg and Durban's suburban areas.

In response, pharmaceutical chains Dis-Chem and Clicks temporarily shut down all branches across the province on Monday. Banks, too, have likewise been disrupted. Absa shut down all branches in the province while Standard Bank urged customers to utilise online banking, reporting that the unrest had prevented employees from coming into work.

All public transport services in the region were also halted. In Gauteng, the escalating situation in Alexandra and Jeppestown over the weekend forced a number of local shop owners to stop trading for fear of coming under attack. As tensions grew on Monday morning, a number of shopping malls and businesses across the province were forced into similar action.

====(end quote)

Soon the looting began to spread beyond the borders of KwaZulu-Natal into its neighbouring provinces, especially Gauteng, the most populated province.

https://mg.co.za/news/2021-07-12-all-public-transport-in-kzn-stops-as-looting-spreads

======(from article)

Widespread looting of shops and attacks on shopping malls continued in various parts of KwaZulu-Natal on Monday as the province continued to bear the brunt of the wave of violence that has broken out since the imprisonment of former president Jacob Zuma last week.

All public transport in the province — buses, taxis and trains — stopped operating on Sunday in anticipation of the spread of violent looting on Monday. The N3 has been closed to traffic to and from Johannesburg. A number of blockades on the N2 between Durban and Richards Bay have been reported, along with attacks on vehicles and shopping malls to the south of Durban.

While the initial outbreak of violence and looting took place in the CBD and townships around the city, by Monday it had spread to suburbia, with shopping malls being looted in Glenwood, Sydenham and Chatsworth.

A long trail consisting of people carrying goods looted in Glenwood were busy making their way towards the Ridge during the morning, with no police visible while they did so.

According to South African Police Service officials, 219 people have been arrested since the attacks started, 96 of them in Gauteng and 123 in KwaZulu-Natal.

Late on Monday morning, the South African National Defence Force announced that troops were being deployed in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.

Soldiers were immediately deployed to hotspots around the province, guarding a number of key points believed to be under threat from rioters. The KwaZulu-Natal provincial legislature and the high court were among the first buildings to receive army guards.

=======(end quote)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-57803513

By 12 July the escalation of violence, and consequent provincewide looting had become to intense that the RSA military was being deployed to aid the failing provincial police in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.

By 12 July at least six people have been killed and nearly 500 arrested.

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-07-12-business-in-crisis-mode-as-violence-escalates

=====(from article)

On Monday morning, the fourth day of violence following the arrest of former president Jacob Zuma, private security firms were encouraging owners of businesses on the R103 from Heidelberg to Johannesburg to close their gates, lock their businesses, and evacuate as looters and others intent on damaging properties and businesses made their way up the road.

Elsewhere in KZN retailers including, Massmart, Dis-Chem, Mr Price, Shoprite and Pick n Pay reported extensive damage to property.

Massmart reported that looters had gained access to, and made off with merchandise from seven Massmart-owned stores including Game, Makro, Cash & Carry, and Cambridge Foods. Dis-Chem announced that it was closing its pharmacies, vaccination sites, and drive-through testing stations in the KZN area. This was due to the unrest, the company said.

“We are not being targeted specifically. I believe that it is general lawlessness and criminality taking hold of the country. We do not want to put our staff and our customers at risk. So, as a precaution we have closed our KZN stores and will do so in other regions if we feel that there is a risk,” Brian Epstein, the operations director at Dis-Chem, told Business Maverick.

The economy will not escape unscathed either.

“The economy is already struggling with the negative impact of tightening lockdown restrictions at the turn of Q2.21 into Q3.21, but the sharp political unrest SA is now experiencing could have an even more severe impact, and cause GDP growth forecasts to be downgraded,” says Investec chief economist, Annabel Bishop.

==========(end quote)

Some good 2 minute summary Youtube:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Mrw-CbjpGfQ2

WEEKS OF VIOLENCE: 12 July - 12 August 2021

https://www.citizen.co.za/witness/news/pietermaritzburg/boy-11-shot-dead-during-unrest-in-pietermaritzburg-kzn-20210712

Another noteworthy thing that happened on 12 July was that near a township in Pietermaritzburg, a young 15-year old boy was accidentally caught in the chaos, and hit with a rubber bullet fired from a riot-gun, which mortally wounded him. This incident was the 1st person killed during the 2021 SA riots by police, and sparked a reactionary frenzy amidst the local rioters, and later amongst other nationwide rioters as news spread.

For the next 4 weeks there would be unrest, but the most had died down by the 1st week, after 12 July, as the RSA military began to hem in rioters, and catching looters.

What was astonishing about the 2021 Riots was that basically nearly everyone was guilty of stealing something, entire township communities would descent upon supermarkets, destroy and loot and burn them.

RACIAL TENSIONS BETWEEN SOUTH AFRICAN BLACKS AND INDIANS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natal_(province)

Kwazulu-Natal is not only the homeland of the Zulus, but also the place of residence of South Africa's largest Indian community. For some context Natal was what the Bonglish state was called in the early 19th century when Cape Town changed hands between England and the Dutch. As the proto-Boers fricked off North, the English settlers expanded alongside the coast mostly, or stayed back next to Cape Town.

It was in Natal where the events took place in the famous Zulu (1964) movie, where the British overcame the might of Shaka's descendants, and won over control of the region, which they called Natal. It went from being part of the Cape colony, to being it's own province in 1910, when the Union of South Africa formed, up until 1994 when RSA became democratic. As seen in the above map, Natal was seperated by the white regions, from the ancestral Zulu-portions. Which is why in 1994, it was renamed to KwaZulu-Natal, as one unified region.

Anyways, important that when the British got ownership from the dutch, they would import heaploads of Indian slaves and indentured servants to farm both Cape Town and Durban which were their most important refreshment ports for their wooden sailing ships, traversing along the Cape Point between India and Bongland. The descendants of these Indian slaves (1.3 million of them) would house themselves majority in the Eastern Cape and modern Natal, similar in comparison as most coloureds are concentrated along Cape Town itself.

This is important to understand because the people closest to the epicenter of the violent outbreak of looting in July 2021 in Natal, was the largest indian communities of South AFrica.

Indians in South Africa have always been apart from the local blacks, in culture and religion, even compared to coloureds who get along more or less. Indians are also famously ESPECIALLY racist towards blacks, as the two group have always mistreated one another in the street level, and kept apart due to language and cultural barriers. In the past, under Apartheid, the NP regime kept a lid over animosity between Indians and Black peeps, but in the absence of a white dominating group to hate in concert, the bitterness between the two groups would fester in the new Republic of South Africa.

Black people would practice extreme nepotism against Indians, especially when government work was at stake which further bred animosity. Indians are also very entrepreneurial, and many Indian families have shops, of fabrics and imports straight from the homeland of mother India, where they sometimes literally have familial contacts for cheap goods. And unlike chinese shit, imported Indian products like spice, fabrics and factory shops, were not garbage when they were cheaper than local markets

Thus indians found nationwide success (as well as steriotypes) as small shop owners with usually their whole family and 2nd 2nd cousin governing the business. But this also meant that indians had to deal with the poorest, which further worsened their relationship with SA blacks who tended to be the majority thieves.

The hilarious part about Indians is that they are not even quiet about their dislike and racism towards SA blacks, they will straight up say k-ffir when whites shy away from the word. They will follow black customers like a shadow in their shops, while giving whites overwhelming preferential treatment. Indians refuse to like in mixed-raced communities, and go to vast lengths to cordon themselves off from black people in terms of housing; only whites are ever allowed in their suburbs or apartment-complexes when possible. And they can because the majority of social powers spent in South Africa is aimed at the past wrongdoings of whites, thus it is almost like the racism of Indians have this invisible blindspot/sweetspot. Well Almost.

It's not like blacks are oblivious towards Indian racism, famously the Guptas refused to have black servants cater to them, when they went to their infamous marriage in Sun City, only white servants were allowed

The situation between Indians and Blacks in Kwazulu-Natal 2021 July, was very very similar to that of the relationship between Koreans and African-Americans in Burgerland Los Angeles in 1992, when the demographic worst hit by the King riots were Korean businesses adjacent to the African-American communities, because the police were either overwhelmed or stayed out of the zombie warzones.

ROOF KOREANS vs INDIAN ROADBLOCKS:

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/-we-are-outnumbered-govt-raises-concerns-attacks-indians-south-africa-1828312-2021-07-15

In the Indian-majority township of Phoenix, KwaZulu-Natal, some of the residents had armed themselves to fight off looters, due to the complete absence of police forces. Like Boers, a lot of the Indians are very somewhat pro firearm, and a lot of Indians had firearms available.

https://www.opindia.com/2021/07/south-africa-zuma-prison-riots-loot-arson-unrest-ramaphosa-civilian-indian-community-arms-self-defence

========(from opindia article)

As per reports, in several places of the country, residential communities have formed armed groups to defend their homes and businesses from the rioters. Armed groups of civilians have reportedly been formed in several parts of Durban city as community members try to defend themselves. As police forces and private security provisions are stretched beyond their capacity, residents and business owners seem to be taking the law into their own hands to save lives and property.

The Indian community arms itself to protect homes and businesses

Ex-President Jacob Zuma's association with the Gupta brothers and their role in the corruption cases is being used as an excuse to target many Indian businesses and Indian communities living in Durban and Johannesburg, as per some reports. One such Twitter handle, instigating riots against Indians, wrote, “Let us not forget that Jacob Zuma sold our country to Indian monopoly capital (IMC).” The Twitter handle had shared an image of the tainted Gupta brothers.

https://x.com/EnemySlayer24_7/status/1414570274297507841

Members of the Indian community were seen armed with guns and artillery to ward off rioters, looters, and arsonists. Willem Petzer, the Chairman of Taxpayers Union of South Africa, tweeted, “I have to say, after watching everything that happened today, I am looking at the Durban Indian community in a whole different light. These guys showed us they are willing to go all the way to defend their communities when they are threatened, whatever it takes.”

https://x.com/willempet/status/1414649243931975680

=======(end quote)

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/breaking-what-happened-in-phoenix-were-criminal-acts-of-the-worst-kind-cele

The KwaZulu-Natal Premier Sihle Zikalala stated that 38 people had been killed by vigilantes in Phoenix, Inanda and Verulam. Racial tensions in the area, it was discovered, were stoked by false rumours of a massacre of between 350 and 500 black people, allegedly by Indians in Phoenix.

Some residents had set up roadblocks and started patrolling the streets after rioting in Durban. Some of the vigilantes had started racially profiling people, mainly black people, and restricting their entry. When one truck containing looted items was stopped, the four occupants, who were black citizens, fired at the vigilantes, who shot back and killed one of them.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/04/world/africa/South-Africa-Phoenix-riots-deaths.html

[

Now during the rioting as Indians kept setting up roadblocks, armed to the teeth with with firearms, black peeps on social media started complaining that the Indian communities, especially of Phoenix were racially profiling black people when determining who would come through This further inflamed tensions between the two communities.

https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/7/15/south-africans-organise-to-confront-looters-defend-property

AFTERMATH:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-14/food-shortages-set-to-grip-south-africa-after-rioters-rampage

On 12 July 2021, the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa warned that widespread looting, destruction and closures would lead to food shortages across the country. Damage to transport infrastructure had caused food shortages, leading to queues outside grocery stores, and prevented harvesting and distribution of fresh produce.

The largest food manufacturer in South Africa, Tiger Brands, suspended bakery operations in affected areas due to damaged infrastructure and facilities while also noting that it had suffered a loss of stock in excess of R150 million

https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/kwazulu-natal/kzn-unrest-bread-has-returned-but-we-are-now-paying-r40-for-a-loaf-b8cbdbce-8953-404e-8686-db205a2354ee

PREVIOUS ZUMA POSTS:

https://rdrama.net/post/207684/marseyflagsouthafrica-2018-jacob-zuma-refuses-to

https://rdrama.net/post/205860/marseyflagsouthafrica-jacob-zuma-the-nkandla-residence

https://rdrama.net/post/203575/marseyflagsouthafrica-jacob-zuma-rpe-trial-and

OMG did you SEE Paris Hilton's Baby? Bet she's DESTROYED down there! Well, if she wasn't already.... Oh, oh! Or what about Matthew Perry? Should've taken swimming lessons along with the acting ones! Who doesn't love some celebrity gossip? Crochety old people and the celebrities themselves, probably... buuut who cares about them, right? Our topic today certainly didn't! A maverick without loyalty but never a revolutionary, living luxuriously on fame built from extortion, born low but bestowed many titles: it's The Prince of the Press, Brigand Chief of Letters, The First Modern Journ*list, Scourge of Princes, the 'Divine' Pietro Aretino!

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EARLY LIFE

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

Arezzo, Italy on the 19/20th of April, 1492 was a relatively unimportant Tuscan city, subject to Florence and the Medici family under their new head, Piero. He had just succeeded his late father, Lorenzo 'The Magnificent' de'Medici around 10 days earlier, but our focus is on another newcomer decidedly lower on the social ladder. Margherita 'Tita' Bonci, a local woman famed for her beauty and questionable fidelity, had just given birth to a son named Pietro.

Even if you've never heard of Pietro, you've probably seen him. He appears in both Michelangelo's Last Judgement and Titian's Ecce Homo. In the former he served as St. Bartholomew, and in the latter he was Pontus Pilate.

Pietro's father's identity is somewhat in dispute. There are two candidates: Andrea 'Luca' del Tura, a poor shoemaker and Tita's husband, and Luigi Bacci, a minor Arezzan nobleman. Bacci's "relations" with Tita would be exposed sometime after Pietro's birth, leading Andrea to abandon his wife and possible son to join a mercenary band. Pietro spent the rest of his childhood raised in Bacci's household, with his two younger sisters and Bacci's two legitimate sons, who he'd keep in contact with for the rest of his life and refer to as his brothers.

When Pietro was around 10, things started to heat up in Arezzo. Piero de'Medici was not as politically gifted as his predecessors, ending tangled up in a war with Pisa, once a Florentine city, but now in revolt. Anti-Medicean parties in his domain smelled blood in the water, and in Arezzo a riot occurred that expelled or lynched officials loyal to the family. Piero's forces came back with a vengeance, paying back in equal terms the massacre committed on their allies. By the end, businesses and homes burned, Anti and Pro-Mediceans murdered each other in the streets, families were broken, and even uninterested parties were swept up in the chaos.

It was a lot of suffering for little change, and that's possibly how Pietro viewed it. It would be his first time experiencing the politics of his day and all the consequences that come with it, but where others may become misanthropic or agitate for change of the system they see as pointlessly destructive, Pietro saw opportunity.

There were big players out there with a lot of money to spare on these meaningless games, and in Italian feudal politics, the only mode of social mobility for a non-noble was to find one to attach yourself to. Instead of being payed in slaughtering soldiers, maybe Arezzo could've seen some of that Medici gold, should they have played their cards right. Whatever could have been, what was certain is that none of these great men were in Arezzo. At the age of 14/15 in 1505/1506, Pietro left his home town and made for Perugia, a prominent University city.

Pietro always had a talent for the written word and Perugia was the perfect place to hone his skills. Several famous Italians had once studied there and the university was famed as a place of art and learning. It alumni includes several artists, intellectuals, and even Popes. It was here that Pietro received his moniker "Aretino" (meaning 'from Arezzo'), a way to differentiate him from the other 5 billion Italians named Pietro.

He fit right in among this bustling crowd of artists, though he always fit within any crowd he found himself. Perugia lent him the opportunity to pursue his talents while also meeting other young aspirers, Agnolo Firenzuola, famed classic Italian author, among them. The two became fast friends, sharing love of, and talent for, mischief as much as writing. In a letter to Firenzuola later in life, Pietro recalled a time when the two exposed their naked bodies out a window to spite a stuck up old woman who had taken offense to their behavior.

It was also in Perugia that Aretino completed his first published work: a collection of sonnets and poems named "Opera Nova." It's his most unremarkable, though still notable in that it's his first and by the fact that he was only 18 when it was published in 1512. But a Renaissance art education is hardly complete with literature alone, so it's unsurprising that in Perugia Pietro also picked up on sketching. Though he never used his skills to foray into the world of painting, he would become a passionate critic of the art. Maybe little too passionate...

An exhibition was held in Perugia 1514. A painting depicting Mary Magdalene recanting her sinful ways and dedicating herself to Jesus was being displayed. It just happened that the subject used to model Mary, a popular local prostitute, was hardly as godly as the painter attempted to sell her as. Pietro took issue with that, and in the night painted over Mary to make her resemble more closely who she was modeled after. The nobles running Perugia soon caught wind of the growing scandal, and exiled Aretino under pain of death.

(Or maybe that didn't happen; Pietro gathered many enemies over the course of his life and it's possible that this story is slander. )

Either way, Pietro was out of Perugia by 1514 and headed toward Rome, where he'd find his first big break.

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WORKS AND STYLE

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Before getting into his adult life, it's important to understand how he was as an author, since that was his choice of career. The quality of his writings was stellar; you won't find many people disparaging him on that front, not even his enemies. His skill was highly respected enough that his name was often invoked whenever an author or speaker of the time needed and example of unparalleled wit. His style of writing was unconventional and uniquely his in an era when every kind of artist was looking to imitate the classics of Greece and Rome. Playwriting had become consumed by the old Roman format created by Plautus. Literature often set out to copy the styles of Homer and Virgil. Most were written in Latin or Greek.

Pietro was monolingual in vernacular Italian, and wrote in that language. More importantly, he actively tried to set himself apart from the classics, shirking traditional structure and the tired old phrases and metaphors of Antiquity. The subjects of his works were often unique, too. His specialty was satire of contemporary life and society, and he didn't shy away from any of its more unsavory aspects. Keep in mind, this was the time of the Renaissance ideal, where every man was expected to be wealthy and generous but not indulgent, good mannered, strong in body and mind, a good leader or honorable follower, and a devoted Christian yet enthusiastic humanist. Few could live up to the ideal, yet everyone did their best to project an image of it. Much of Pietro's work served to expose that image for a lie.

Discussions

(Or Ragionamenti, also translated as "Reasonings")

This is a dialogue between two women: Nanna and Antonia. Nanna's daughter, Pippa, is coming of age and the two are debating what career would be best for the girl. As women were largely starved for choice in this area, Pippa's prospects are limited to becoming either a prostitute, a nun, or a courtesan (female servant in a noble's court).

Prostitution is ironically depicted as the least s*x-involved, as it is treated as merely a business transaction. It's also the most independent, as prostitutes are their own superiors and independent businesswomen. Courtesans are subject to all the intrigues and corruption in courtly politics, while still required to forfeit their bodies to their superior, and any and all dignitaries or officials he may entertain in his household. Nuns have no exposure to politics, nor any obligation to surrender their bodies, yet are the most s*x-obsessed of all career choices. Nanna recalls the story of a convent where the nuns would routinely engage in orgies with a neighboring monastery of monks, in all manner of positions and using all manner of toys.

Aretino wasn't just speaking from his butt there, either. In his time, both monasteries and nunneries had reputations of being dens of degeneracy (particularly German ones). The point of the Discussions was to satirize women's places in society, that of the two more "respectable" career choices, both were significantly more immoral and cynical than that of a prostitute.

The Stablemaster

(Or Il Marescalco)

This work follows a gay stablemaster being forced into marriage by his lord, the Marquis of Mantua. As his wedding day reaches closer and closer, the man tries everything he can think of to get out of the arrangement, but to no avail. Unable to avoid his lord's wishes, he shows up nervous and broken to his wedding ceremony, where it's revealed that his "bride" is actually a man in drag. The Stablemaster's main theme is to parody couples' relations and the institution of marriage.

Letters

(Or Lettere)

This is not a single work, but a compilation of many letters sent to and by Aretino during his lifetime. It's where we get much of the information on what he was like and on his life in general. It's important to not take the contents of them at face value, as Aretino was notorious for amending them after the fact to make himself look better, on top of sometimes just lying in them outright. One of the most naked examples of this tendency came from his correspondence with the court of Henry VIII.

Initially, Pietro's main contact within England was Lord Thomas Cromwell (yes, one of those Cromwells), a chief advisor to the king. He was cordial and friendly with the man, relying on him for many of his transactions with Henry. When Cromwell fell out of political favor and was executed, Pietro's first reaction was to mourn the man's death in a letter to a close confidant. Then, to a member of Henry's court, justify the execution of Cromwell, as he'd apparently become too religiously radical before his death. As Henry later came to regret Cromwell's execution, Aretino followed up with a letter expressing condolences over the advisor's death, decrying it as an injustice since an innocent man had been killed, but careful not to place the blame on Henry himself.

These are just a couple of his works, but you can get and idea of what he was willing to say and what kind of writer he was from them.

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ROME

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Pietro came to Rome with virtually nothing but his talent. Which if you asked any of his detractors, was solely lying, cheating, stealing, and any and all "unvarnished effrontery," as one historian put it. If you asked Aretino himself, it was the power of his words, the integrity of his character, and his indefatigable good nature. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

He ended up in the court of a certain Augustino Chigi, personal banker of Pope Leo X. Though the particulars of their meeting aren't known, Pietro had to possess some fraction of genuine skill to end up in such a position. Chigi was certainly one of the richest men in Rome, probably in all of Italy, and maybe in all of Europe. He had connections to every powerful figure in the Eternal City, and by extension most of Italy, often entertaining them in his mansion, the Villa Farnesia.

Leo X himself was particularly fond of his banker's opulence, often dining with him, sometimes on plates made of precious metal, and always with expensive food. It would be reasonable to assume that Aretino first came to meet Leo while under Chigi's service, but his big break with the Pontiff only came later in 1516, 2 years after his arrival in the city and the year the Pope's pet elephant died.

The animal had been a gift from the King of Portugal, imported from India as Portuguese merchants were beginning to set up shop there. Not used to the climate of the Mediterranean, Hanno, the elephant, had been in bad health since its delivery. Nonetheless, Leo became attached to his pet, and was devastated at its loss. News of the tragedy got Pietro's creative juices flowing, and he began to write.

A pamphlet titled "The Last Will and Testament of the Elephant Hanno" began circulating Rome shortly after the death of its titular character. It posed as what it was titled, a will endowing certain prominent Romans to the property of the deceased. The inheritors, of who many were Cardinals of the Church, were satired with lines like,

Item, to my heir Cardinal Santi Quattro I give my jaws, so that he can devour the revenues of Christ the more readily

Every entry was a thinly veiled jab at each 'heir's' vices. For another example, Hanno's peepee went to a Cardinal known for frequently violating his vow to celibacy.

This was a bold move on Pietro's part. Many past Popes wouldn't have hesitated to execute him for pulling a move like this, so Aretino was lucky that Leo X's birth name was Giovanni Lorenzo de'Medici. The Medicis were nothing if not strong patrons of the arts, literature no different. Rather than becoming infuriated at Pietro's cheekiness, he was amused and saw the potential in his talents.

Aretino found himself invited to the Pope's court at the age of 26, no doubt basking in the newfound recognition he always knew he'd deserved.

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IN THE HALL OF THE MEDICI POPE

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Pope Leo X's luxurious tastes and vast connections suited Aretino well. Whatever circles he ran in under Chigi's patronage. he had access to and greater here. Anyone who was anyone had some sort of presence in the Papal court. Colonnas, Orsinis, Gonzagas, Sforzas, d'Estes, Venetian Oligarchs, Master Sculptors and Painters, French and Imperial ambassadors, and especially Medicis, regularly visited St. Peter's. They'd wine, dine, gossip, party, and all-around indulge in front of the backdrop of the rapidly deteriorating social and political stability of wider Europe.

Don't mistake their indulgence for aloofness; it was just part of diplomatic strategy. The big players weren't dancing carefree like Nero while Rome burned (not that Nero actually did that). Under the table where they dined, Orsinis plotted against Colonnas for the Papal throne, Venetians and Medicis struggled over financial dominance, and Gonzagas, Sforzas, and d'Estes fought to maintain their independence against the Papal, French, and German Imperial forces arrayed against each other, all seeking to expand control over the Italian Peninsula. The opulence acted as a forum, a friendlier place for various factions to meet than the battlefield. Assassinations happened in back alleys, not the Pope's dinner table.

Portrait of Cardinals Giulio de'Medici (Left)(He's important) and Luigi de'Rossi (Right) with Pope Leo X (Center)

Aretino was there for all of it. He was as good a conversationalist as he was a writer, and took note whenever potentially useful information was let loose by any of the prominent party goers, careful also to spread as much rumor as he heard. Blackmail and extortion were well known to him then, had possibly been well known all his life, if you believe his enemies. Knowing the secrets of the powerful kept his position secure and profitable.

That's not to say he was solely a parasite. If he was truly only harmful, then he easily could've been a victim of any one of those back alley murders. The truth was that having a rumormonger around court was as useful for those in power as it was profitable for Aretino himself. He was an important source of information, and one who could slander or talk up any reputation he was paid to. The sonnets and poems he was officially employed to write could be dedicated to anyone he wished to build up or tear down the reputation of. His allies received nothing but praise in them, they were talked of as if they were all experts in the arts, pinnacles of Christian morality, and epitomes of good rulership, while his enemies were unlearned, Atheists (then a synonym for immoral), and tyrants.

Along with the flattery and slander of people he never truly cared about either way, Aretino also found genuine friendship (at least one). He grew close to a Ludovico de'Medici, nicknamed 'John of the Black Bands', the leader of an Italian mercenary company, and a very competent one at that. Aretino hit it off with him, finding Ludovico an equal in war and soldiery to his talents in writing and the arts. But what they most had in common above all was their questionable ethics.

Aretino was a liar and slanderer, a blackmailer and extorter. Ludovico was a pillager and looter. They both were hedonists. To give you a look into the mercenary's character, he's reported to have committed his first murder at age 12, and later r*ped a 16 year old boy... a year later, when he was 13 (or maybe he accidentally murdered someone; sources disagree) (Aretino also had a taste for the same s*x ( do you think??? )). On top of the personal crimes he committed, he had no shame in allowing his men to r*pe and pillage as they pleased while on campaign, only getting away with his behavior as he was a Medici, and an extremely important asset to the Papal military. Such exploits earned him another moniker, 'Il Grande Diovolo' (The Great Devil).

Statue of Ludovico de'Medici/John of the Black Bands

But the high life couldn't last forever, and in 1521, Pope Leo X died. All the lavish eating finally caught up with the obese man and killed him at the (relatively) young age of 46. Aretino was out of a patron, but the Papal election started immediately after, and so did Pietro pick up his pen.

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TRUTH TO POWER

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Aretino had ventured into public writing before with Hanno's Will, but with Conclave convened, he shifted it up to ninth gear. Pamphlets proclaiming to be written by Pietro Aretino began to appear posted on a statue in Rome. They loudly denounced virtually every member of the College of Cardinals, drawing on their open secrets and rumored vices, slandering their characters as unfit to wear the Papal Tiara. Only one cardinal escaped Pietro's libel: a Giulio de'Medici, prime candidate and forerunner in the election. Aretino was looking to ingratiate himself with the upcoming Roman administration.

Many historians call it the first instance of Yellow Journ*lism, rumor and gossip of the rich and famous sensationalized and packaged into an easily consumable format. Aretino wasn't the only author, nor was he the first, but he was the showiest. None before had been so bold as to openly mock authority figures, sign it with their full name, and then dare the College to do something about it. No one except for Aretino. In one sonnet saying,

It's really surprising that the Cardinal's College,

can find no way of stopping Aretino's verbiage

The flow is lost in translation, but the intent is clear. Pietro was aiming to make himself as well known to the public as he was in Leo's court, and an ally of Giulio, albeit at the expense of every other Cardinal's opinion of him.

And it was working. Regardless of the victims' opinions on the pieces, the public ate them up. Aretino's name became so well known to Roman satirists that it was practically synonymous with the genre itself. Imitators appeared, copying Pietro's style as well as his name. To this day, whenever an Italian High Renaissance work of satire signed "Pietro Aretino" surfaces, there's a good chance that it has nothing to do with its alleged author.

These are the statues that were posted to. The first is nicknamed "Pasquino" and it's where the term used for these writings, Pasquinades, originates. The second is Marforio, and likely where Aretino posted his writings. Pasquinades often took the form of dialogues between the two statues, where they'd discuss and satirize contemporary events and figures.

Looking back to Conclave, it actually wasn't going too well. Cardinal Giulio had support of the plurality, but the Colonnas were running good interference, and the college was deadlocked. In hopes of breaking the deadlock, Cardinal Giulio nominated Cardinal Adrian of Utrecht. Adrian was a drab man, religiously strict and held a strong dislike toward the humanist and classical sensibilities of the day. He shied from opulence and indulgence, dutifully serving Emperor Charles V as an experienced statesman. In short, he was probably the best fit clergyman for the job.

Everyone still hated him, though. Ironically, it was for everything that made him such a qualified candidate. Popes Julius II and Leo X had turned Rome into a capital of the Renaissance, a place for high art, learning, and above all, luxury. The prospect of a Pope that despised all of that was universally unappealing. Everyone also thought he'd be an Imperial toady. Adrian had tutored a young Charles V during his youth in the Netherlands, and now served as his viceroy in Spain. He was looked at as a potential foreign agent that would deprive Romans of their way of life.

So naturally, he won. Probably through divine intervention, the Dark Horse Adrian of Utrecht managed to eek out support from the Medici and Colonna parties, with only the Orsinis objecting. It was definitely not through any effort of his own; he was in Spain the entire time, not even thinking of a candidacy. Rome teetered on the edge of rioting while Cardinals were jeered as they exited the building. Many Romans saw the Curia as having sold their city, and maybe all of Italy, to the Emperor. Cardinal Giulio immediately left for Florence, as Rome was too hot to stay in.

Meanwhile, Aretino must have been in more of a panic than even Giulio himself. He'd just made an enemy of every political faction in Rome, except the Medicis, but they were absent the city now. He knew someone with the reputation of Adrian would never stand for his activities. So now in more danger than he'd ever been, but also with more fame than he'd ever had, Pietro Aretino left Rome as the new Pope Adrian VI's boat departed from Tortosa, Spain.

Wooooaaaah It's gonna be a twoooooo parter!!!! And I was realllllllly trying to get it all in one this time Goddarn WHY can't people just have shorter lives?!

Anyway, look out for that if this guy catches your fancy. If you recognize the period this takes place in then you know things are about to get spicy. Aretino's party to a lot of it, and it was entertaining to track his movements through this time.

If you curious why you've maybe never heard of this guy being hailed as one of the greats of Italian Renaissance literature, it's because his work was looked down upon as too inappropriate for a long time, falling out of favor when the moralistic English literature world first took issue with him in the 1600s. His reputation's had sort of a revival among certain academic circles, but never penetrated into the popular culture. It's likely that it won't ever have a revival there either, since his work primarily focused on issues contemporary to him. He'll probably just continue in those niche circles, interesting only to history nerds and literature neurodivergents

In fact, much of his work was almost lost to time before it resurfaced in some Victorian explorer's private collection. His name was uh... Jean-Frederic Maximilien de... uhm... de...

...

...WALDECK??!?!?!

AAAAAAHHH I CAN'T ESCAPE IT! IT'S-IT'S MUNSTER! IT'S HERE AGAIN! IT'S FOLLOWING ME

TL;DR - SPAL leaks messages with @R-slur_but_spooky where they discuss their mutual intentions to keep fricking @TED_SIMP after she implies to each party that the other had r*ped her.

DISCLAIMER: I offered both @R-slur_but_spooky and @TED_SIMP to come on the show and share their side of the story, of which they both declined. The offer is still open if they are so inclined. I also made sure to scrub any names that were shared, other than SPAL, who freely uses his name. If I somehow missed something, PLEASE let me know right away and I'll scrub it.

Today, we'll be exploring a cautionary tale of the E-girl and the destruction she leaves in her wake. This will be a story of r*pe allegations, of a love triangle gone awry, of the consequences of simping, and most importantly of a man being banned from a gay cat gossip forum.

Let's start with the catalyst for this situation. R-slur messages SPAL (who I will be calling sirp because I already wrote these as notes for my show lmao) with a hard hitting question - did he r*pe Ted?

sirp responds with proof that they were meeting up again and nootices a discrepancy - Ted had told him she was r*ped in February. Something isn't adding up

R-slur responds, confirms that they fricked in February, shows the message Ted sent to him about being r*ped in August

Sirp puts on his thinking cap - Ted has alleged that she was r*ped to both of them at different times. Something isn't adding up.

R-slur asks for a timestamp and reveals that there is a 3rd man who warned him that Ted has a habit of r*pe claims. WHO IS THE 3RD MAN???

sirp asks if they were dating, posts him confronting ted about this conversation.

Group chat between the 3 is formed. Ted proceeds to sperg out at them for nooticing she lied to them, vows to cut ties forever (spoiler: she did not).

Ted leaves the conversation, the Sirp and R-slur get down to business. The 3rd man is mentioned again.

They continue on to compare notes, the most pressing matter of which is what Ted's body count is lmao

Sirp talks about how good she is in the sack, R-slur talks about how she always blocks him but he finds a way back in over groomercord. Sirp then says he'd like to continue fricking her despite the light r*pe allegations and that he's happy to share her. Very progressive and polypilled

R-slur agrees and says he keeps in his back pocket for ez kitty. Proceeds to say he never uses condoms, which enrages Sirp, who is extremely worried about contracting STDs. Sirp asks for R-slurs name to level the playing field.

Sirp continues to ask for R-slurs name after getting told no, ted claims that R-slur freaked out last time she fricked another guy

Sirps asks one more time for name, is rejected, asks if R-slur can tell Ted that he's sorry and to please talk to him again. R-slur asks what he said to upset her, Sirp accuses her of having a r*pe fetish. She spergs.

R-slur claims that Ted seeks out getting r*ped as a form of self harm and that Ted thought r-slur would r*pe her when they met up. Explains why he got mad at her, which totally had nothing to do with her fricking other guys.

Sirp worries that if she gets r*ped too much, she will contract an STD that she could then pass to him. Rather than opting not to frick the woman who lies about r*pe, his solution is to use a condom and take PREP. Sirp and R-slur vow to help each get back into Teds good graces, R-slur laments that he's blocked on everything by Ted

They vow to reconvene, R-slur considers not talking to her anymore. Spoiler alert: He continues talking to her. Sirp once again impresses the importance of safe s*x upon R-slur.

R-slur laments that a mid woman is boring to talk to and contributes nothing to their conversations. They both lament that Ted won't be their long term FWB because she's too boring. The 3rd man has also complained to R-slur about this.

Sirp reveals that he knew she wasn't the one when she wouldn't read the substack articles he wrote and sent her. R-slur laments that she was going to move to his area and didn't because he wanted to frick her more.

Sirp states that fricking a bpd e-girl brought back his confidence post-divorce, decides to be happy it happened instead of sad it ended (spoiler alert: it didn't). R-slur talks about Ted having a meltdown after he suggested they don't talk about literally nothing all the time. Conversation ends.

THE STRAW THAT BROKE THE E-GIRLS BACK

In a now deleted post, @TED_SIMP called Sirp "Creepy", which led to him posting the leaks that got him banned, which included her underwear photos, first name and job. So you might ask yourself, what led to the dissolution of their FWB relationship?

Well, sirp had referred to her alleged molestation at 9 years old as "prior sexual history" when she attempted to use it to skirt his grilling about why she won't come see him. Two manipulators using their tactic of choice to manipulate each other, and as expected, it ends poorly. As far as I know, this led to the dissolution of their relationship and kicked off the drama we have today.

THE INTERVIEW

Some notable excerpts from the interview (you'll have to watch it to get it all )

• I got Sirp to read his entire side of the @R-slur_but_spooky conversation, with some questions thrown in where I deemed necessary. He did not seem ashamed or even cognizant of how cringe his messages were.

• Sirp alleges that he's not a p-dophile and that it is infact @CARPMASflorist who is a convicted felon and sexual offender. AFAIK this is entirely unsubstantiated - he claims a comment on his most recent substack article backs this up but it leads nowhere for me.

• Sirp states that his ex-wife was a bugchaser trying to intentionally infect him with HIV and a braphog who was heavier than he is.

• Sirp states that he is, in fact, still down to hook up with Ted despite everything that has happened. Ball is in your court, Ted!

MY THOUGHTS

ESH

This is, ultimately, the story of 3 people who are fricked in the head. @TED_SIMP is an attention seeker who consistently tries to garner simp-athy using her history of sexual assault and mental illness, and whether it's real or not, she knows playing the victim will usually work in her favor. @R-slur_but_spooky is deeply in denial about his feelings for Ted. I actually believe that when he was talking to Sirp, he matched the detached energy to not seem stupid for his feelings. Get some self respect buddy, because she's using you as an emotional tampon. You sperging out and getting angry on her behalf is embarassing and I believe you can do better. Sirp is waaaay to old to be acting like this. If some r-slurs on a gay cat gossip website call you a p-dophile, maybe you shouldn't say things that give them ammo and then sperg out on the BPD chick you were fricking. He dropped the underwear pics and name maliciously, without a doubt. He also did this interview knowing that it would embarass the heck out of both other parties, and probably gets off to it. I'm more than aware of that aspect. This is just too much of a shitshow for me to pass up.

As far as people who will say I've gone too far and am a bad person for inserting myself into this, I don't give a frick about the gay butt e-friendship you've forged over groomercord. I use this website for the lulz and if you're playing friend simulator on here, that is beyond pathetic. That's not to say I don't like some of you people - this is my favorite website, and I enjoy the community a lot - but there is a reason that most of the userbase disdains the groomercord strags. Everyone in this story brought it upon themselves by sperging out on this website, which led me to start sniffing around. If they had just kept their pants on and their mouth shut, this would have never happened - but cows can't help themselves.

Let this serve as a cautionary tale - you can't use a mentally ill woman for easy access to free casual s*x and get away clean. You can't use mentally ill men for easy access to free validation and get away clean. One way or another, it'll all come down on you, and there will be no one to blame but yourself.

As a vegetarian, I respect most animals and believe they deserve fair treatment. My exceptions are dogs and a certain insect I'm phobic of.

Animals are strange, but sometimes also funny. I'd like to share two silly animal facts.

Sorry for the messy shitpost with a Holly deficit. Self-yeeted so hard I can hardly get out of bed so I'm phoneposting

1. Rhinos are stupid

As one of the largest herbivores in the world, the rhino has captured the imagination of the public. There are 5 subspecies with the white rhino being the most popular.

It spouts a magnificent horn that can grow up to 35 inches, though some have sported horns exceeding 50 inches.

Despite their prowess, rhinos are remarkably stupid, even for herbivores, but they still have the typical herbivore paranoia. This is worsened by the fact that they're borderline blind. In addition to being color blind, they cant detect non-moving objects beyond 90m.

The consequence? They frick everything up. These paranoid, dumb, blind creatures will pick fights with trees, poles, rocks and even each other. They spot a car in their peripherals and their first instinct is "that's a moving monster, kill it."

There's countless videos online of dumb rhinos fighting inanimate objects and you should laugh at them becuase they're foolish.

This dumb rhino gets stuck in a tree. Fricking idiot.

This idiot attacks a car. Is... is that a moving object I can barely identify? Oh god I'm chaaaaaaarging!

2. Lazy ants

Ants are typically characterized as industrious, but that's not always the case. Some ants are lazy and will mooch off other ants.

It is estimated that about 40% of ants in a colony aren't doing shit. Scientists have tried to cope but there's no real answers why they don't work except they don't want to and prefer beeing NEETs.

• They're waiting for increased work! - No, even in such times, the worker ants just work harder

• They take turns! - No, they've been observed long-term. They just don't want to work.

They benefit from their colony but contribute nothing, just like me.

General thoughts about women:

1. Mislabel their genitals

Grown butt feminist women with children cannot accurately label their own genitals. They will call the entire vulva a vagina. This is 100% false. It's like calling your face a mouth.

Imagine if men walked around calling their whole package a scrotum. That is what women are doing.

It's crazy that 20yo+ women still need this high school level diagram.

2. Practice prejudice

If someone came up to me with FBI crime statiatics on race, what am I to do but assume they're bad faith racists? Nobody moral tolerates that.

Same person comes to me with gendered stats and suddenly I'm supposed to feel collective guilt for men? I've never threatened anyone, yet alone thrown a punch. I've been the victim of violence but never the perp, yet I'm supposed to view myself as an oppressor? I'm done. Never again will I internalize such crap.

>"But its men committing the violence you experienced!"

Yes, and the bulk of the victims of muslim extremism are other muslims. What's your point? Muslims are trash and they should fix their own problems, right?

The concept of "Gender-based violence" is no different to white South Africans complaining about farm killings. It's literally the safest people complaining the loudest. YOU'RE THE LEAST LIKELY TO BE MURDERED AND IT'S NOT CLOSE. SHUT UP.

Women should be escorting men at night, not the other way around.

3. "Men fear humiliation, women fear murder"

Well no. 78% of murder victims are male. Adult women are literally safer than babies when it comes to murder. 76% of female murders are committed by someone they know, while its only 50% for men.

They more someone gets to know a woman, the more likely they are to be killed. The more people get to know men, the less likely they are to be killed. I wonder what's the possible explanation for that?

So men fear humiliation and exponentially higher murder rates and murder. I feel like true crime shows/podcasts present a skewed view because almost all cases will be about women being murdered. It's a provocative topic, but it's not representative of crime patterns. In reality, 8/10 true crime documentaries should be about male victims.

Here's a thought experiment for women. Imagine going into a men's bathroom in a town you don't know. Would you be scared? Think it's any different for a 5 foot 1 male when literally everyone towers over you?

What about prison? Would you like to be locked up with felonious men in a cage? Have you considered the crippling fear a 5 foot 1 black man feels knowing he could be thrown in jail, even while innocent, and there's nothing he can do about it? Is the fate of a 5 foot 1 male in jail any different from a woman's?

At least females have women-only safe zones. Men are vulnerable 24/7 with 0 places for a time-out.

4. Not wearing diapers

I've read some gross shit about women's discharge eroding their panties. Some even wear panty liners. Women need menstruation pads and tampons for menstruation. There are all these absurd products when there is a singular one that would solve literally all your problems - diapers!

Is it that time of the month? Who cares! Discharge? Who cares! Upskirt? Who cares!

Diapers are the OBVIOUS answer for anyone who's thought about for more than 5 seconds, yet women won't do it because they don't want to be infantalized. It's all social, all for the desire to be like men even when it's not anatomically rational.

Diapers are reusable, they'd be more ecologically friendly than throwing away tampons and pads all the time. Just put on the darn diapers.

4. Judging black male clothing

Why is it socially acceptable to tell black men to pull up their pants? Frick off. If you tell women to dress modestly or cover themselves, its instant misogyny, yet its 100% open season to tell black men how to dress.

Obama gets praised for saying it. There's songs about it. Absolutely 0 moral discourse regarding the frickedupness of the entirety of society feeling entitled to dictate the dress code of black men. Tell me, which is more obscene?

I should wear my pants at my knees until there's even partial parity between men and women's clothing standards. Honestly, just taking your pants off and walking in boxers is more modest than most modern women's clothing.

I browsed a thread some time ago, and the site owner of Userbenchmarks apparently has notoriety for being biased towards GPS, and lets his bias influence his site.

Now this is something i personally never knew or knew about any drama revolving around the. I would use https://www.userbenchmark.com for quickly checking rough comparisons between laptops, to Graphics cards, or way back in 2019 when i built my beastly budget beast gaymer desktop. But i never ever exclusively relied upon one site or source for determining a component's actual strength - the only real way to determine actual real world performance that wasn't advertiser bullshit, was to check out Youtube gaymer turbo neurodivergents which demonstrated the performance of the laptop or component at various benchmarks or current released high level intense games to see actual real world comparisons.

But holy smokes, it seems /r/PCMasterRace realllly hates the site. But even as i was reading through the thread I couldn't determine why, in what aspect was this site biased?

Finally a day later, as the top comments surfaced, I realized the site https://www.userbenchmark.com, apparently had a thing against AMD (one of the two most prominent Graphics Cards manufacturers in the global industry).

https://old.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/185folc/4070_ti_vs_rx_7900_xtx/kb1qqu7?context=8

"According to the guy that runs that site, an i5 from two generations ago is better than the the latest consumer ones from AMD." Summed up in this comment - so apparently the site owner is amanufacturer fanboi, no not a fricking ConsoleWar fanboi, but a fricking manufacturer fanboi lmoa

Like holy smokes, imagine /r/hailcorporate nonsense, where fat nerds fight like they did during the 2010-2011 era about whether their Gaystation or Xbone console was better and had better games, but instead now it's for fricking what Graphics card you have in your desktop

https://old.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/185folc/4070_ti_vs_rx_7900_xtx/kb39y0y?context=8

Some further tech jardon i dont completely understand, but apparantly Userbenchmarks.com is sucking Intel and Nviea off

One user then goes on to link a classical comparison between AMD and Intel Processors

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-13600K-vs-AMD-Ryzen-9-7950X/4134vs4133

and even an illiterate tech-illiterate moron like me can spy something very wrong from an instant glance. The Ryzen processors were AMD's answer to the much more worldly famous intel dominated market, and in 2019 era, they were shockingly good, especially for their prices. I know this, because i had researched flagship and entry processors from both companies. The comparisons were very basic. A ryzen 3 was roughly the equivalent of an intel3, a Ryzen 5 to intel 5, ryzen 7 to intel 7, ect ect

often the Ryzen equivalents was 20% slower than their intel peers, but could be as much as 40-50% cheaper, least in RSA in that time. An as far as I know this trend has not altered that mich in past 2 years.

So when an i5 workhorse Intel CPU is apparently the equal of a Ryzen 9 flagship turbo chip, then you know someone, somewhere is taking the piss.

For anyone currently looking to compare components, the only definitive answer is to go to Youtube and search comparisons between two desired chips/processors/GPUs ect, and see the real world performance rather than some r-slurs say so. There's enough benchmark turbo neurodivergents who will cover the product u want.

https://old.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/185folc/4070_ti_vs_rx_7900_xtx/kb1brck?context=8

Another example of the long and short summarized:

https://old.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/185folc/4070_ti_vs_rx_7900_xtx/kb2caes?context=8

Basically the site algorithm appears to heavily weight down the performance comparisons of AMD products.

ALSO. apparently the Userbenchmarks fights are so common that an automated message is replied to any comment linking to Userbenchmarks.com

When we attend out place of employment, we are typically expected to behave in a professional manner, and to abstain from sexual activity and forming relationships. There are a few reasons for this. For example, nobody likes being gossiped about and its OBVIOUS that the married couple at work goes home and talks shit about all of you. Secondly, when there is anything that needs to be voted up, its easy for husband wife to team up, essentially doubling the weight of their vote. Lastly, it's just fricking awkward. Stop it.

(Today, I'd like to shine a light on one of the most disgusting ways men acquire s*x - prostitution. These cases will illustrate the harmful effect it has on women.) = this is not an absolute statement because there are exceptions because there's billions of humans and great variety in our dispositions and desires.

University students become s*x workers

Today I'd like to investigate a few cases of folks who had s*x in inappropriate place (mostly work). It's up to you to judge if they were fricked up or whether we should give them sympathy.

I'd also like to know if you've had s*x at work. I haven't but I recall stories of teens having s*x at school.

There's no denying how normalized s*x work has become. Here's the crazy thing - make a Tinder profile and have your image just be a wad of cast. You'll instantly get swipes from girls listing their prices. There's plenty of YouTube videos demonstrating this. Show your face and you'll return to the normal Tinder experience (i.e. no likes unless you pay for gold to see the bots that liked you).

Two young girls from the University of Miami and Florida International University attempted their hand at prostitution. They seem to be what everyone imagines s*x workers as - just regular girls looking for some extra money. Nevertheless, they get into trouble because they're also found with drugs. One of the girls is studying a criminal minor, and they were willing to charge more for bareback.

Do you think the Johns are evil in this case? They clearly know they're not leading these women down any good path. THey are agents of corruption. Although we still need to consider consent. So here's a thought experiment: one could put a gun to a women's head and say ‘have s*x with me or die'. Or, one could dangle a dollar over a poor person's head and say ‘have s*x with me or starve to death'. In both instances, there is no real consent, only the desire to live. In this way, payment in prostitution acts a form of force.

Girls do porn

You've probably heard about this case, but are you aware of just how fricked up it is. I watched a documentary that detailed what one woman went through. She was contacted via Craigslist (?!) to do fitness modelling (okay, for me I would 100% interpret that as prn but whatever). They pay her for accommodation and transport and all the expenses. She arrives and when she's on set, they take her handbag and lock it in a safe. They tell her she 's going to get fricked in a porno.

She immediately says no, but they convince her that she can't leave unless she does it. Basically, the doors are locked and she's r*ped and the r*pe doesn't stop until she puts on a good act and pretends she's loving it. The sheet are filled with blood. She is locked there for the whole night, and given a brief moment to rest. when she wakes up, she is made to masturbate on camera, which she does out of fear. Once she's out, she so traumatized she doesn't tell anyone, but she does need medical care because of the internal injuries. Oh, and that's another thing. So many girls in porno will suffer internal injuries from being pounded.

Eventually, the video is released, and its edited to make her look like she was a slut looking for it. Most of her family disowns her, leaving her lonely and suicidal. She begins to lean that plenty of other women have been treated that way by the company, and she rallies with them to find justice. They were able to file and win a criminal lawsuit, but due to the clandestine nature the company hides its fines, none of the women have been paid a cent of the millions they are owed.

All of that is shocking. What's more shocking is that the videos of women being r*ped made it into Pornhub's top 20 and have been viewed over 680 billion times. The women brave enough to come forward have ceaseless tried to get their videos taken down - this is even after the lawsuit that proves that those videos are literally videos of r*pe. Yet you can still find them online very easily.

The effect this has had on these women has been devastating. One has committed. Many have been disowned by their parents (remember, the pornos are filmed to portray the women as enjoying it). Many lost their jobs as well. Despite all this, there is a question that remains - why are these videos still up?

Let's think about. Child porn is immediately taken down and the uploader is arrested. Adult r*pe is considered obscene material which is 100%. There is no legal obligation to destroy a r*pe video of an adult, especially if you own the intellectual property. In both cases, r*pe is occuring, the only difference is the age of the victims. However, the recording and distribution of one is considered a serious crime while the other is considered entertainment. You can find the videos online if you want to watch r*pe.

Linda Lovelace

Deep Throat is one of the most famous pornos of all time, but very few know the evil that went behind it. The 1972 movie stars Susan Boreman who, as you might guess, displays her felattion skills. She performed under the pseudonym Linda Lovelace. Not convinced it's historic? Well, it became one of the highest grossing x-rated films at the time.

The premise is stupid. Linda discovers her clitoris is in her throat. Consequently, she deep throats several men as she seeks the one she can call her husband. It was shot over 6 days with a budget of $47,500 but it managed to rake in a staggering $50 million. S*x pays.

Years later Susan Boreman came forward with allegations that the director, Chuck Traynor, had 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. The whole thing is a r*pe video and it generated $50 million. Still available online if you want to watch r*pe.

Asian Massage Parlours

Individuals who want to sell s*x for money should be free to do so. However, it is worth remembering that the vast majority of s*x work globally is based on exploitation, r*pe, and coercion. This includes pornography which, as I've demonstrated, is sometimes r*pe in a pretty bow.

Some men turn to prostitutes but you face the same problem. There is a plethora of women being coerced, exploited, and manipulated into the job. It's not nice. A common scam implemented in modern day is to operate in grey areas - occupations that allow for intimate contact. I'm talking masseuse parlors. Asian massage parlours have a massive human trafficking problem. Many of the women working often have no immigration papers and are brought into the United States with the promise of employment only to find that they will be expected to do s*x work.

With no immigration papers, many are afraid that they will be arrested should they complain to authorities. Although the joked about ‘happy ending' in Asian massage parlors is often spoken about in comical terms, the reality of it simply isn't funny. For more information on this, I would recommend the documentary Hidden S*x Slaves of Massage Parlours which follows an investigator in San Francisco who inspects Asian Massage Parlours and finds many women desperate to leave.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x46zwk2

Pornstars who died in 2023

Saya Song - Sewer side

Dahlia Sky - Sewer side

Hank Hightower - died in sleep

I oppose s*x work and it's not a feminist stance. Like, fricking someone because you have more money than them and they're desperate, or they're emotionally damaged. I understand that there's woman who do s*x work with no oppression, and see underwear, nudes etc online. Nonetheless, I don't believe anyone should be reduced to their sexuality for the sake of survival. I support the Swedish model and I hope you do too. Benzos are giga based

What's up g*mers. Merry Fistmas to you and Season's Sneedings. Enjoy this early Christmas gift.

On November 27th, 2023, the "Daily Wire" revealed a trailer for their upcoming "comedy" film, titled, "Ladyballers." Have yourself a peek if you haven't already:

The film was directed by and stars Jeremy Boreing, the CEO of the "Daily Wire," a chud internet news outlet-turned media company.

BRIEF REVIEW

This movie is absolutely r-slurred, but is not as bad as I thought it would be.

As far as comedy goes, the film has a mixture of geriatric Facebook humor, "dudebro" comedy, and unfunny slapstick. There are some visual gags that are pretty hilarious, and the pacing is not bad either. Still, it's preachy at times and many of the jokes fall flat.

In interviews promoting this film, Jeremy Boreing often spoke about the "raunchy" comedy films that were popular in the early 2000s, like "Dodgeball," and "Tropic Thunder." Boreing lamented that these kinds of films are no longer being made, and really haven't since the Obama administration (that's right, Obama ruined America AND comedy movies). This movie was very much inspired by those kinds of films, which is very clear to see in the final product.

Still, the movie lacks a "polish" that a real Hollywood film from that era would have, as nobody with actual talent would risk their careers to be in this movie. Many of the jokes are like 70% propaganda and 30% joke, not dissimilar from an SNL sketch, but written from a right-wing point of view. Many of the jokes that are actually funny are poorly delivered. I found myself laughing at jokes because of how bad they were.

Considering that nearly all of the "actors" in this film are not actors, this wasn't terrible. If you like "dudebro" comedy or are a fan of the Daily Wire, you might actually enjoy this film. There is no groundbreaking social commentary on transwomen in sports, or even any new jokes making fun of s (again, it's all boomer-tier humor).

If you want to see an actually hilarious movie made by the Daily Wire, watch "What is a Woman."

SYNOPSIS (Spoilers Ahead)

The story begins with a flashback to 2008. High School Basketball Coach Robert "Rob" Gibson (Jeremy Boreing) is on the sidelines, coaching his team during the Tennessee State finals. Being down ten points at halftime, Coach Rob delivers an "inspirational" speech to his players in the locker room, telling them that "winners are just losers that win."

His team rallies from their deficit to defeat their opponents and secure their state title. After the game, he is interviewed by the local news, who dub him "COACH MIRACLE." Rob basks in this moment, winning his THIRD state championship as he holds his beautiful wife, Dharby.

The scene fades to the modern day, 15 years later. Rob is now a recreational league basketball coach at a rundown community center, and his players are completely disinterested in anything he has to say, instead using their phones during practice. An extremely African American player, Kevin, openly disrespects Coach Rob while he gives a speech on the importance of winning.

Rob mentions an international competition known as the "global games," an event in which anyone can compete for the glory of being a winner. The players seem completely disinterested. Kevin then body-checks Coach Rob after he makes a comment about the someone from the rec league stealing his catalytic converter. Kevin drops a literal sawzall while doing this, which is meant to be a gag I guess.

As the players leave, Rob gets a text message from his daughter Winnie, who needs to be picked up from elementary school. He speeds down to her school while speaking on the phone with Gary, the director for the rec center. Gary explains to Rob that it's racist to tell the students to not steal from him, and after Rob makes a comment about stealing being bad according to the bible, Gary fires him over the phone.

As Rob pulls into the school, his car is giving off significant amounts of fumes and noise due to the catalytic converter missing.

==========

Quick Notes From Holly!

Getting your catalytic convertor stolen sucks a fat peepee. I had it happen to me once. I left my piece of shit car parked at my work overnight and some tweaker took a sawzall to my car and stole it. As I turned over the engine, the loudness was deafening. The car's engine was no longer connected to the muffler, so the raw noise of the engine made my small commuter car sound like a formula 1 racecar. Catalytic convertor thefts have been on the rise in the US and on the west coast for many years now. They are commonly stolen for the rare, precious metals inside, including rhodium, platinum, palladium and sneedium. State and local governments have decided to combat this rising theft problem by requiring photo ID to sell used car parts, which is r-slurred because these things are being stolen for their precious metals, not their value as car parts.

==========

Rob arrives at the elementary school to pick up his daughter Winnie, where a triple covid-masked teacher accosts him for being late for the fourth time. Rob can't hear the teacher sneeding at him, so she removes her three masks one by one while yelling at him (I lol'd at this scene).

As Rob drives his eight year-old daughter home, he asks her about what she learned at school that day, and she proceeds to regurgitate socialist talking points about the cold war and capitalism. Winnie then mentions that a classmate showed Winnie "her peepee" in the girls bathroom. Rob is incredulous and asks why a boy is in the girls bathroom. Winnie explains that the "boy's" name is "Mary Margaret" and is actually a girl, and Rob needs to stop "misgendering her." Rob expresses disapproval the public schools curriculum, and mentions sending Winnie to a private school. Winnie retorts that private schools "uphold white patriarchal privilege." Rob asks Winnie where she is learning all this from, thinking it's the public school. Winnie explains that she learned this from her mother Dharby's new "partner," Kris.

Rob pulls up to Kris's place, where we find Kris (Matt Walsh) meditating in the front yard in front of some tacky rainbow "in this house" signs. His entire house is decorated with "current year" political signage. Rob tries to have a conversation with Dharby about what happened to Winnie that day, but is interrupted by Kris, who talks about an upcoming athletic competition he is training for, which has $5,000 cash prizes for each heat.

Kris explains that he values his health and keeps himself in shape with MRNA vaccines and an insect-based diet (I laughed at how terrible these jokes were). As Kris wanders off, Rob can't believe that Dharby replaced him with such a clown, but Dharby explains that Kris is a good man that cares about things other than winning. Rob tells Dharby that winning is important, and Dharby responds by telling him that if Rob thinks winning is important, he should try it sometime (sick burn). Rob leaves in a huff.

Looking for work, Rob arrives at a CD store he worked at as a teenager. His boss told him he was always welcome back, so Rob arrived 25 years looking for a job. He was greeted by a beautiful black queen, who explained to him that the store had changed ownership in that time, becoming a diner known as "The Dollhouse" that features drag queens as waitresses (why isn't this a thing). Rob is shocked to find one of his former star players from his 2008 team, Alex, working at the diner dressed in drag. Rob got hired on as well.

The scene cuts to the two men dressed in drag, sitting at the bar together, and lamenting their circumstances. When Alex asked what happened to Rob, Rob explains that he hasn't changed, but the world around him has. He complains about how the world has gone soft, how men are supposed to "lead from behind, not make fun of losers, and get out of the way" and how people don't value "winning" as much. Alex explained that he tried his hand at acting for about ten years in LA, but couldn't find work, obviously due to the fact that he's a straight, white male. Despite the years taking their toll on Alex, he claims he is still an extremely fast sprinter.

We now see the two men in an alleyway, with Alex sprinting to show his coach that he's "still got it." Rob convinces Alex to train for the upcoming competition, "Nashville Runs." They began their training immediately, running away from a high level coomer, who becomes a running gag in the movie:

The next day, Alex and Rob attended the competition, with Alex still wearing his blonde wig from work. Upon attempting to register, the official told Rob that the men's events were all full. Rob refused to leave the line, and the white blonde woman official threatened Rob with her taser, saying "I will tase a white man" before actually tasing him. Upon seeing Alex and thinking he is a transwoman, the official apologized profusely and allow them to register for the women's events instead, free of charge.

Rob decides to go along with this, telling Alex that even a male athlete "past his prime" is still significantly faster than a woman in peak physical condition. Alex resents being told he's "past his prime," and takes issue with competing against biological women. Rob explains that his daughter had told him that this is the way the world works now. That if Alex is going to wear a dress, he may as well wear the dress of a champion. Alex put on fake tits and joined the other women on the starting line.

Alex destroys the women in the competition, winning every single women's event by massive margins. This drew the attention of the local news. News anchors Stacy Santiago-O' Brian (Brett Cooper) and Drake Diamond (Michael Knowles) were called out by their fellow journo, investigative reporter Gwen Wilde (Billie Rae Brandt) for misgendering Alex during her coverage of Alex's record breaking achievements that afternoon.

After the competition, Alex and Rob celebrated their victory at the bar, with Rob pocketing most of the money and only leaving Alex with $500. Alex mentioned that he has been approached for a sponsorship by bud light (lol). While discussing plans for their next grift, the two are interrupted by Gwen Wilde, who confronts them with her knowledge that Alex isn't trans and they are doing this for the money. It turns out she is secretly a TERF, but wants in on the grift.

Gwen explains that as the "DEI" crowd got their paws on the "Global Games," they have since "democratized" the competition, allowing amateur

s to tryout for the games. The organization also began allowing transwomen to compete. Gwen believes that it won't be long until all of the best woman athletes in the world are, in fact, men.

"Cheating, lowlife men, like you."

Alex protests, saying that everyone will hate him and Rob if he attempts to compete in the "Global Games" as a woman. Gwen responds that the public will LOVE them for doing this, because she will tell them to, as this is her job as a journaloid. She offers to run PR for them in exchange for exclusive rights to their story, and half of the prize money. Gwen then comes on to Rob, who takes him home and ties him up later that night. He gets a surprise phonecall from Alex, and two come up with the brilliant idea of playing basketball in the "Global Games." The two then decide to get the team back together.

The pair find the Crain brothers, two half-brother fraternal twins that were known for constantly fighting, but also being very close. The two brothers had opened up a sussy used car lot. They were easily convinced to join Rob and Alex, who had neglected to tell the brothers that they would be competing as "women."

The team went on to find their former center, David (the dude that sort looks like Elon), living deep innawoods after suffering a mental breakdown during a college basketball game several years ago.

In college, David witnessed a Badger mascot doing pelvic thrusts, which caused him to get distracted and lose the game.

This lead to him fleeing to the mountains, building a cabin, and spending his days murdering badgers. David wouldn't be as easily convinced to join the team, who did a terrible job or persuading him, mostly calling him fat and weird. After his former teammates left, David made his way to the basement of his cabin, revealing the mascot tied up and held hostage at his cabin.

David emerged from the cabin and announced that he would rejoin his old team. This left the squad needing only one more player. The reunited athletes looked through their old school yearbook at the Crain Brothers dealership, looking for any old players that would still be interested. David then arrived freshly shaven, with a FRICKING JEREMY'S RAZORS AD IN THE MOVIE.

It didn't seem like anyone good was still available. The team came up with one more idea. Their old towel boy, Felix.

Felix is super rich now, but is still very much the same person. He is super weird and is obsessed with what his former highschool friends think of him:

As the players settle in to Felix's home gymnasium, which is creepily similar to the one they played on in highschool, the former teammates erupted in a fistfight after David's PTSD was triggered by one of the Crain brothers doing pelvic thrusts in their old highschool mascot costume.

Their scuffle was interrupted by Gwen, who had arrived unexpectedly, and informed the teammates that Rob had neglected to tell them the "terms" of their new "professional sports careers." Rob explained to the men about his plan for them to compete as women, against women, for the purpose of making a bunch of money.

The players did not take this news well. They had been excited to be part of a team again, and relive their glory days. They weren't thrilled about dressing up like women to beat them.

Coach Rob gave another one of his inspirational speeches. Rallying the players around the fact that they basically all peaked in 2008 (except for Felix obviously), with the Crain bros now running a skeezy dealership and David living innawoods off of rodent meat. If they want to reclaim their former glory, they needed to need to take this chance at success. This shitty speech is enough to convince these broken men to sacrifice the last part of their dignity and dress up as women to compete together once again.

Just after this speech, Dharby also arrived at Felix's gymnasium to drop off Winnie. She seemed to be affected by the presence of Gwen, thinking that Rob had actually moved on from their relationship.

The players checked out their new jerseys, and start dressing up. Rob mentioned that the players would need to shave, as women don't have beards. Winnie corrected him, saying that lots of women have beards, including her art teacher. Gwen picks up on Winnie being well-versed in "current-year" politics, and decides to pick her brain. Winnie then lectured the team on all of the convoluted gender identities.

Winnie explains that as a "man," you can become a "woman" without any physical changes to your biology. You were a "woman" all along, unless you decide to be a man again. Then you were a "man" all along, unless you can't decide, in which case, you're "genderfluid." The players think this is kind of bullshit, but Alex reassures them that being a woman is easy, you just need to shave your legs, cry at work, and tell yourself how brave you are for doing things that require zero physical courage.

THE GLOBAL GAMES

The team made their way to a "Global Games" qualifier being held in Nashville. We see our news anchor friends have returned and are now virtue signaling HARD following their on-air embarrassment.

Here we see the time for the first time, the "Lady Ballers" in all their glory.

The women's qualifiers are almost completely empty, as nobody actually cares about women's sports, including other women. The only people in attandance are a lone dude passed out in the stands, Winnie, Kris, and a mortified Dharby.

(God I love Kris, he has the best energy) The "Lady Ballers" faced off against the "Hawkettes." Upon seeing the "Ladyballers, the "Hawkettes" coach immediately begins SNEEDING, incensed at the idea that his all female team is playing against a bunch of grown butt men in wigs. They turn to the referee, who is none other than BEN SHAPIRO himself. Ref Shapiro explains that he doesn't give a shit either way, that he was only paid like 50 bucks to be here. The game began, and while the women used actual tactics and "basketball fundamentals," the men easily overpowered them with their physical advantages. The women's coach threw his jacket on the ground, calling the game "garbage." He then received a technical foul from Ref Shapiro, who also cussed him out on the sideline, owning his butt with facts and logic.

As the game continued, Gwen posted clips of the game to social media. A "social media flash mob" randomly showed up at the arena and start cheering on the "Lady Ballers," who were literally dunking on their female opponents, beating them 98-17. David noticed the "Hawkette" players crying on the sidelines following their defeat, being consoled by their coach, which had a deeply negative effect on him, and he began to have second thoughts on this whole operation. Also affected by this was Dharby, who thought this entire game was a total mockery of sports.

The players were then offered many lucrative sponsorship deals immediately following their triumph over the "Hawkettes." Seeing the limitless potential of the "virtue economy," the players decide to stay the course. They continued to sweep the competition in the qualifiers with ease, winning their next four games with almost zero effort. In addition to dominating women's basketball, the "Ladyballers" also competed in other women's events being held at the "Global Games," including weightlifting,

wrestling,

and swimming (featuring a cameo from Riley Gaines, the sore loser swimmer who lost fair and square to Lia Thomas).

The Crain brothers also explored their newfound sexual identities as 'lesbians," boldly going into the women's locker room.

Felix, now going by "Shelix" became a Dylan Mulvaney-style influencer.

As the "Lady Ballers" notoriety began to grow, Gwen covered their rise in a televised, exclusive interview. The team discussed their rise, and their issues as "trans athletes." Alex gave a tearful, seemingly heartfelt interview on the struggles of being a transwoman. Also while on the show, Coach Rob explained to Gwen that according to Winnie, one can even be "trans age," allowing "Shelix" to play teeball against elementary school girls. The movie cuts to "Shelix" going up to bat against a flabbergasted girls team, hitting a line drive that takes out a girl in the infield.

After the interview, Coach Rob touched base with the players. While David was focused on making the women's tennis team, and the Crain brothers were interested in using their notoriety to hookup with female fans, Alex seemed to be actually really happy about living as a woman (this is subtly hinted at throughout the movie up to this point, but now it's out in the open). And admitted that everything he had said during the interview was true.

After leaving the studio to meet with Dharby in the parking lot to drop off Winnie, Dharby confronted Rob about his grift, telling him that what he is doing is wrong. Dharby goes on to say that the only person on his team who is probably trans is "Alex," who is deeply unwell. Rob counters Dharby by mentioning that he learned all this gender shit from Winnie, who learned this from her woke school, and Dharby's woke "partner," Kris. Rob goes on to say that it's bullshit that r-slurs like Kris get to make this crap up, but when people like Rob capitalize on it, then all of a sudden he's the bad guy.

Rob says the only thing that matters is that he is happy, and his "girls" are happy. Dharby retorts back that they "aren't real girls." This is overhead by our boy Kris, who can't believe what he has just heard from his "lover" Dharby.

Dharby, fed up with everything, leaves with Winnie, leaving Kris and Rob together in the parking lot.

"At least we still have eachother."

The movie cuts to game four of the semi-finals. Here we see a cameo by the Zodiac Killer himself, Ted Cruz!

The "Ladyballers" are playing like "Ladyballsack." David's wrists are fricked up from playing tennis, the Crain bros are tired from piping women all the time, and Alex is slowly morphing into a woman himself, and is getting worse at sports as a result.

The "Lady Ballers" won, but it was an ugly win, with the game ending in a brawl between the Crain brothers. Rob gave a press conference, doing damage control for his team, and reassuring everyone that the "Lady Ballers" would be able to perform in the finals.

Exhausted from the day's events, Coach Rob sat in the locker room, trying to decompress. Winnie walked in, and asked her father if they could talk.

Winnie sat down next to Rob and told him that she wants to become a boy. She said she wanted to be a winner, just like her Dad. She explained that she thinks boys are simply better at everything, like basketball, swimming, MMA, STEM, karate, being rockstars, driving, parking, opening jars, etc. Rob concedes that boys are better at those things, but they are just things men made up to be good at. Rob went on to say that women are better than men at all sorts of things, like being nurturing, multi-tasking, caring about people, making friends, and that, most importantly, women civilize men. That the world would not be able to exist without women. Plus women can bring people into the world, which is a superpower no man will ever have. Dharby overheard this heartfelt message from father to daughter, and was deeply moved by it.

Rob returned home to find Gwen in his house, who had picked the lock. The journo confronted him about his post-press conference conversation with his daughter that she had overheard, as Rob was still mic'd up from the press conference.

Gwen then told him that he needs to get control of his team or she would expose him as a fraud. Gwen is fully dedicated to profiting off of the transhumanist grift, and has staked her career in profiting off of the trans movement. She needs Rob to win and make sure his team can keep it together or she will "cancel him."

THE FINALS

The qualifier finals begin with a shot of or beloved news anchors. #Transracialism

(This is the hardest I've laughed in the movie up to this point)

Our brave "Lady Ballers" took to the court, where they met their opponents:

THE COWGIRLS

The "Lady Ballers" were awestruck. The "Cowgirls" coach had swapped out his all female roster with REAL BLACK DUDES and it looked like Gwen has also switched sides/was playing both coaches. There was no way they could stand a chance.

The homeboys BALLED on these fake-butt honky bitches. The "Cowgirls" buckbroke the "Lady Ballers" the same way they had buckbroken all of the legacy women's teams previously. They ended the first half 0-55 against the "Cowgirls."

After the first half, the exhausted "Lady Ballers" returned to the locker room, where the Crain brothers were confronted by a "Hawkettes" player they fricked during a "basketball slumber party" together. She revealed that she was pregnant with twins, and that each brother was the father of one twin.

The spirits of the team were in shambles. They were worn out, and it was clear their grift (at least in basketball) had run its course. As they reentered the court, Coach Rob admitted that they "have taken this as far as we're gonna take it." Rob then said that while the "Lady Ballers" aren't girls, they sure as heck aren't men either. The only thing they could do now is lose the game with some dignity.

The players did remind Rob that they had still qualified for other Women's events in the Global Games, so they would all still be attending, but probably not for basketball. Rob told them that they needed to forfeit those opportunities, because their legacy would be "erasing women from sports." They agreed. Rob told his players he had a plan, but needed them to buy him some time.

After narrowly missing a gunshot from the head from Gwen, who was up in the rafters with a sniper rifle, Rob then spoke with Alex one-on-one. Alex, now going by "Alexia" told his coach that while he thinks biological males competing with females is clearly wrong, that he is a woman, and that all those years playing basketball, he never quite felt like himself. Working at the drag diner, "The Dollhouse" made him feel like himself for the first time in his life, and this is who is really is. He then told Rob that his parents have never been more proud of him.

Coach Rob tells Alex that what they are doing with women's sports is nothing to be proud of, that he's not a woman, but a lost man in a lost world with shitty parents, and a bad coach. He then tells Alex that they did wrong by him by going along with the lie and not telling him the truth. After Alex asks Rob, "How can you be sure I'm not a woman?" Rob punches Alex in his Ladyballs.

As the second half is about to begin, Blaine Crain decides to grab the mic from the announcer and propose to the Hawkettes players that he had supposedly impregnated with his brother Jack. Jack and Blaine then got in a fight in the middle of the court before a "Cowgirls" player shoved them onto the announcers desk.

David confronted this player, who was then pants'ed by Felix, revealing his peepee to the audience.

The audience recoiled in horror and fascination at the large, black snake before them, including the coomer guy from earlier and Andrew Klavan (another Daily wire Cameo). This HAD to be in the movie, as many American Conservatives are OBSESSED with black peepeees.

As the second half is about to begin, Coach Rob comes up with a 5-D chess plan to beat the "Cowgirls." He brings his daughter's girls basketball team to the court. During the second half, Gwen approached Rob and tell him that she won't "cancel" him after all, but that their work together had come to an end, and she will also never have s*x with him.

As the girls are so adorable, the black dudes have no choice but to let them win. The crowd goes wild as the little girls overcome a massive point deficit, in a heartwarming game.

JUST KIDDING. DEM BOYS STYLED ON EM

NINE MONTHS LATER

The Crain boys reopened their dealership, making it into a youth sports center. We also see that Alex is living as a man once again, and Rob and Dharby have expressed a mutual interest in getting back together. Coach Rob gave a speech at the grand reopening, talking about the importance of doing the right thing over winning.

We then see that Kris is stalking them outside of the youth center, looking totally unhinged and photographing them in his car. Kris then removes his wig and is revealed to be NONE OTHER THAN GIGA-TRANSPHOBE MATT WALSH HIMSELF, accompanied by Candace Owens.

While Candace is confused as to how Matt Walsh LARPING as a hippy and boning some guy's ex-wife had ANYTHING to do with the plot of the story in ANY WAY whatsoever, Matt begins laughing maniacally.

THE END!

CAST

Jeremy Boreing

After moving from Texas to Los Angeles to start his acting career, Jeremy Boreing met young conservative columnist Ben Shapiro during the early 2000s, and the two eventually started the "Daily Wire" in 2015. The DW's flagship program, "The Ben Shapiro Show," elevated the burgeoning news outlet to unprecedented success, with the rise of the organization paralleling the rise of Shapiro and his orbiters, each of which have developed a following of their own, and are featured in this movie. Jeremy has used the success of the Daily Wire to branch out into other forms of media. It looks like with the early success of this film, we can expect more chud comedies in the future.

Daniel Considine as Alex/ Alexia Cruise

This guy is some noname actor and producer, according to IMDB.

Jake Crain as Jake Crain

Blain Crain as Blain Crain

David Cone as David Cone

I lumped these three together, as they have a Daily Wire show together that talks about sportsball. I've never heard of them until I saw this movie.

Tyler Fischer as Felix/ Shelix

An NYC-based comedian and content creator, and has some future projects in the works at Daily Wire. He's a chud comedian that is good at pretending to be a soyboy twink. Tyler Fischer plays "Felix," an annoying and weird towel boy that the team picks as a fifth player. His only purpose in this movie is to be "hehe silly beardo manlet," like a shittier version of Zak Galifinakis.

Bliie Rae Brandt as Gwen Wilde

Bilie Rae Brandt is a men's wellness and dating "social media influencer." She plays Gwen Wilde, an unhinged BPD "career woman" who blackmails Rob throughout the film.

Lexi Contursi as Dharby Gibson

Lexi Contursi is an actress, dancer, and piano player, known for minor roles in "La La Land" and "Ted 2." She plays "Dharby," the unfortunately named MILF and soon to be ex wife of Coach Rob.

Matt Walsh as "Kris"

Matt Walsh began his career as a radio host in the early 2010's, before working for Glenn Beck's "Blaze Media" in 2014. He also began contributing for the Huffington Post and began writing at the Daily Wire in 2017. In 2018, Walsh started his podcast on YouTube, being part of the Daily Wire's network of shows. In the beginning, Matt Walsh trailed significantly behind the more established Michael Knowles and Andrew Klavan. This would change in 2022, when Matt became the face of the "Frick s" movement, releasing his groundbreaking "What is a Woman" documentary, which netted him the coveted "Transphobe of the Year Award" for 2022. He has since eclipsed the others to be the second most popular host on the "Wire," only being surpassed by Ben Shapiro himself.

Walsh plays "Kris," the granola butt hippy that is dating Rob's soon to be ex-wife. Kris is easily my favorite character, and I can tell Matt Walsh really enjoyed playing him, although I was disappointed that "Kris" was a psyop the entire time.

Brett Cooper as "Stacey Santiago-O'Brian"

Brett Cooper is a young female clone of Ben Shapiro (kind of like X-23 and Wolverine) She was created in a laboratory as a project in 2020 to win over zoomers on tiktok, and was unleashed on the internet in 2022, complete with a studio set designed to look like a normal girl's room. Most of Brett Coopers fans are not zoomers, however, but coomer chud simps that want to nut on her big eyebrows.

In this film, she plays "Stacey Santiago-O'Brian," a local news anchor who gets publicly admonished by her colleague on-air, and is forced to undergo sensitivity training, along with her co-anchor, Drake Diamond.

Michael Knowles as "Drake Diamond"

There is a running joke at the Daily Wire that everyone who works there fricking hates Michael Knowles, especially Ben Shapiro. A Yale Graduate, Knowles leveraged his friendship with a classmate into appearing on his classmates father's show, a Daily Wire host by the name of Andrew Klavan. Knowles would build a small following with his appearances and first entered the public chud spotlight with his book, "Reasons to vote for Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide," a 200-page book full of empty pages. He went on to have his own show on the "Daily Wire" and be a regular contributor to Fox News until 2019, when he was blacklisted for making fun of Greta Thunberg.

In this film, he plays "Drake Diamond," a local news anchor who gets publicly admonished by his colleague on-air, and is forced to undergo sensitivity training, along with his co-anchor, Stacey Santiago-O'Brian.

Cameos by:

Ben Shapiro, plays a referee.

Andrew Klavan, plays an audience member in the finals.

Ted Cruz, plays himself.

Some others I probably missed.

FINAL SCORE:

5.5 / 10

It turns out that I was coming in late to the conversation when I posted my takedown last night.

Effective Altruism has been experiencing subjectification at the hands of Twitter and Scott Alexander continues to miss the point in such spectacularly abundant fashion that I'm a little annoyed I dashed what I said last night.

The problem with Effective Altruism isn't whether or not it is a part of American Civic Virtue. That isn't really the debate.

The problem with Effective Altruism is that as a movement it is a pure expression of intellectual narcissism.

Scott Alexander is a Narcissist

He thinks, perhaps, that he has escaped narcissism because he delegates the recipient of the adulation to an egregore. But he must defend the threatened object of his narcissism at length, and the nature of his defense reveals the thinness of the cult mentality in pure, dripping narcissism that is deeply repellent to other people.

Most Movements have Exactly the Reputation they Deserve.

Let's dig in.

THE WORD OF THE LORD

Matthew 6

¹“Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven. ² Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. ³ But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, ⁴ that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.

Praise be to God.

Now this passage provokes an ETERNAL CONUNDRUM in that it makes communicating about good and evil difficult, OR...

This passage reveals the ETERNAL CONUNDRUM about communicating about good and evil.

These people think they're atheists.

It happens all the time that people break the spirit and the letter of this religious command simply for the Christian Church to communicate and organize its doings (if there even is such a single conglomeration). Certainly I am self-consciously a cult leader in that I have self-consciously cult - ivated a following. But I am a student of the mystic zummi, and zummi gave up his mask once it became cumbersome: in this way he successfully demonstrated detachment from the spiritually impure form of his following once it had more or less served its purpose (it was an accident of our gathering and therein was its beauty).

The SFBA Rationalist Cult did not have such an intelligence at their disposal.

If you were to throw this verse in Scott Alexander's face after he cried in the public square about the good he and his flock were doing, he would quite rightly dissemble: how is it that we're supposed to talk about doing good?

But the problem with Effective Altruism is that it believes it is separate from the American Civic Religion, even though it is not. It is merely a replication of Christian ethos in a supposedly secular philosophical framework in a deliberately spiritual practice. These people are merely hopelessly confused Christians seeking to differentiate themselves from American Civic Virtue at large with a cult name.

In other words it's not enough that their cult gives, they also demand, in a narcissistic sense, to be recognized for their giving, and they refuse to take any sort of responsibility for the reputation they have incurred.

Scott Alexander doesn't understand: he is the SBF of writing about politics. Every single luminary from the SFBA Rationalists carries the imprint of narcissistic fraud upon them, and they cry angrily that no one will recognize them for "their" work.

With that said, let's look at Scott Alexander's impressive display of impressing you with his display of impressing money virtue money impressing.

Socialists think we're sociopathic Randroid money-obsessed Silicon Valley hypercapitalists.

Because the end result of your "AI Safety" team is capitalists exploiting AI.

But Silicon Valley thinks we're all overregulation-loving authoritarian communist bureaucrats.

Because they're winning in the conflict over their exploitation of AI. The biggest narcissism at work in their AI team is believing they, and they alone, were working on AI safety. Some of us just know how to keep quiet. But I foresaw that there would be idiots who would talk anyway. Who would do the work anyway. It's just funny that the AI Safety team of the SFBA Rationalists were the least effective AI Safety team that has ever existed. (SotS didn't form an AI Safety team: that's just how competent we are.)

So their AI Safety team is pure fraud. (It doesn't matter what they believe, only that they're incompetent.)

The right thinks we're all woke SJW extremists.

Unsurprising the group that prioritizes order at the expense of outcasts is skeptical of a cult of midwit outcasts.

But the left thinks we're all fascist white supremacists.

No, at least, I only think you're incapable of noticing fascist white supremacists, which is worse. That's the EY = fraud AI researcher, SBF = fraud financier, SA = fraud political writer part.

The anti-AI people think we're the PR arm of AI companies, helping hype their products by saying they're superintelligent at this very moment.

Why is it their problem if your team has a PR problem?

But the pro-AI people think we want to ban all AI research forever and nationalize all tech companies.

Why is it their problem if your team has a PR problem?

The hippies think we're a totalizing ideology so hyper-obsessed with ethics that we never have fun or live normal human lives.

You're writing a hyper-obsessed article about ethics in which you are clearly intent on spreading a totalizing ideology. ("No I'm not saying everyone should be an effective altruist, just that effective altruism is a good movement!" And that's where the cult mechanic is operating unconsciously on these sleepwalking myconids.)

But the zealots think we're a grift who only pretend to care about about charity, while we really spend all of our time feasting in castles.

I think the argument that you care more about being perceived about caring effectively about charity than the actual charity itself has a lot of weight: narcissistic cult.

The bigshots think we're naive children who fall apart at our first contact with real-world politics.

In a world where the political parties were: religious fundamentalists behind an authoritarian strongman unto fascism, and the political party that believes in climate change, your team got lost and thinks it's somewhere in the middle even though you're all fricking shitlibs performing American Civic Virtue like good Christians but without any proper awareness of your spiritual origin. (If it's not just Christianity with a lot of complicated handwaving so you can pretend you're atheists, what is it?)

But the journ*lists think we're a sinister conspiracy that has “taken over Washington” and have the whole Democratic Party in our pocket.

This is were Scott Alexander especially is just an idiot. Many of the midwits under the SFBA Rationalist banner suffer from this problem of essentializing journ*lisms, and in normal circumstances I might be willing to give Scott the benefit of the doubt here for brevity, but he does this all the time. His hatred of journ*lists is deeply irrational and comes from his narcissism getting poked at by the NYT.

[An infographic in which Scott Alexander presents twitter criticism of EA]

Scott spends no time rebutting these arguments directly.

The only thing everyone agrees on is that the only two things EAs ever did were “endorse SBF” and “bungle the recent OpenAI corporate coup.”

This is the conversation for inside the PR committee, not for a public statement. Yes, those are the things which EA is known for being involved with. Yes, those things reflect badly on EA.

In other words, there's never been a better time to become an effective altruist! Get in now, while it's still unpopular! The times when everyone fawns over us are boring and undignified. It's only when you're fighting off the entire world that you feel truly alive.

In a post ironic world, all expression is genuine. Scott Alexander doesn't believe he's a myconid. Scott Alexander does not believe he is recruiting for a cult. He carries out the motions of a ritual's function, and he receives the ritual's result.

All of this is precisely why EA deserves criticism.

Time for a quick break.

We ready? Alright. Now we get to the counter-gish-gallop.

A Gish Gallop isn't inherently bad form. If the preface Scott Alexander wrote were coherent and shorter, this would be an interesting document. Unfortunately, the opening paragraph of the Gish Gallop is deep failure.

And I do think the movement is worth fighting for. Here's a short, very incomplete list of things effective altruism has accomplished in its 10 years of existence. I'm counting it as an EA accomplishment if EA either provided the funding or did the work, further explanations in the footnotes. I'm also slightly conflating EA, rationalism, and AI doomerism rather than doing the hard work of teasing them apart:

COMPUTER

ENHANCE

I'm counting it as an EA accomplishment if EA either provided the funding

There it is. Done. QED. This is narcissism. It's a narcissistic cult in which they think they avoid the narcissistic attachment by delegating it to an outside non-human anchor: their Team which is now getting criticism, and their response to criticism is to say

"LOOK AT HOW MANY POINTS WE COLLECTED!"

What do you want, Scott? Do you want an award? For all your good boy points, I am prepared to issue a motion in Impassionata Congress to give you an award: the "EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM IS A REAL CULT WITH REAL PHILANTHROPIC NARCISSISM" award is practically in the mail, I bet I can convince the other Impassionatas to vote 'yes.'

Providing funding isn't doing the work and you really shouldn't be proud of it

But if you are you shouldn't form a cult about it

and if you form a cult about it

Don't be surprised when that cult gets a reputation for being conceited. For being full of frauds who are more interested in getting credit than anything else.

You want credit? You'll get it, but here's what that looks like.

Saved about 200,000 lives total, mostly from malaria

FRAUD. The cult provided money for other people to do work. All of his citations link to non-profits, I'm not digging into every single one but I'll do a few. This one is GiveWell, whose wikipedia page states:

"In 2006, Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld, who worked at a hedge fund in Connecticut, formed an informal group with colleagues to evaluate charities based on data and performance metrics similar to those they used at the fund, and were surprised to find the data often didn't exist.[2] The next year, Karnofsky and Hassenfeld formed GiveWell as a nonprofit to provide financial analyst services to donors."

"In 2013, GiveWell moved its offices to San Francisco where people in Silicon Valley had become strong supporters of the effective altruism philosophy."

In other words, existing Non Profits were already practicing "effective altruism" before the cult tried to take credit for it. What did EA add except for fraud, this taking credit that Scott Alexander so brazenly attempts?

Treated 25 million cases of chronic parasite infection.

FRAUD. The cult provided money for other people to do work.

Given 5 million people access to clean drinking water.

FRAUD. The cult provided money, and wants to take credit for the work.

Supported clinical trials for both the RTS.S malaria vaccine (currently approved!) and the R21/Matrix malaria vaccine (on track for approval)

FRAUD

Supported additional research into vaccines for syphilis, malaria, helminths, and hepatitis C and E.5

FRAUD

Supported teams giving development economics advice in Ethiopia, India, Rwanda, and around the world.

FRAUD

Convinced farms to switch 400 million chickens from caged to cage-free

Scott Alexander's own footnote says:

Their numbers add up to 800 million but I am giving EA half-credit because not all organizations involved were EA-affiliated. I'm counting groups like Humane League, Compassion In World Farming, Mercy For Animals, etc as broadly EA-affiliated, and I think it's generally agreed they've been the leaders in these sorts of campaigns.

AN HONEST FRAUD IS STILL A FRAUD.

Freed 500,000 pigs from tiny crates where they weren't able to move around

This is another one I dug into and FRAUD I'm not going to run through all of these because you get the idea.

Gotten 3,000 companies including Pepsi, Kelloggs, CVS, and Whole Foods to commit to selling low-cruelty meat.

This one doesn't even have a cite and sounds like they're taking credit for the bandwagons others made. FRAUD.

This is the part where things get wacky. See Scott Alexander knows, on some level, that he's defending his cult, as he "slightly [conflates] EA, rationalism, and AI doomerism."

AI

Developed RLHF, a technique for controlling AI output widely considered the key breakthrough behind ChatGPT.

Is this really effective altruism or is it just a cult defending its contribution to AI Threat?

…and other major AI safety advances, including RLAIF and the foundations of AI interpretability.

The really unfortunate thing is that though EY was stupid enough to talk he was also loud enough that researchers in his cult were part of generating the AI Threat.

Founded the field of AI safety, and incubated it from nothing up to the point where Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, Demis Hassabis, Sam Altman, Bill Gates, and hundreds of others have endorsed it and urged policymakers to take it seriously.

You didn't found the field of AI Safety and anyone who thinks this just because the Bishop of SFBA Rationalism said it is an idiot. AI Safety has been a concern for decades. As an actual field the better work was done by people with pedigrees and yes that is 100% an endorsement of formal education over FRAUDS TAKING CREDIT FOR OTHER PEOPLE'S WORK.

That you got a bunch of names to sign a letter doesn't mean it was a success.

Helped convince OpenAI to dedicate 20% of company resources to a team working on aligning future superintelligences.

lmao "Secured some lip service to AI safety after Capital had taken over AI development"

Gotten major AI companies including OpenAI to work with ARC Evals and evaluate their models for dangerous behavior before releasing them.

This is good work that is not altruism, not effective, and if the only thing connecting it to EA is that it's part of the SFBA Rationalist Cult Complex, you have a problem.

The more accurate story is that Eliezer Yudkowsky bricked a bunch of human brains with bad firmware, but some of them landed in a good enough spot to work on the problems that everyone was already working on: it's just that SFBA Rationalists have the brainworm of tithing the credit to the SFBA Rationalist cult.

Scott Alexander has to Stop Performing Cult Bishop in order to actually address the criticism of the SFBA Rationalist Cult, of which Effective Altruism is just one banner.

Got two seats on the board of OpenAI, held majority control of OpenAI for one wild weekend, and still apparently might have some seats on the board of OpenAI, somehow?

"we're naive children who fall apart at our first contact with real-world politics."

[Sam Altman manipulates EY directly in a tweet]

The SFBA Rationalists are so easily duped it's a bit sad.

Helped found, and continue to have majority control of, competing AI startup Anthropic, a $30 billion company widely considered the only group with technology comparable to OpenAI's

Is it any wonder there's people criticizing them both for AI Safety and bringing AI to capitalism? God these people are idiots.

[For some reason, Scott includes a tweet here...]

...where he misses the point about the "weird lesswrong ideas" in favor of a, uh, stupid? comparison to medicare? Like these people are in a cult so they can't understand that their cultishness is offputting. It's sad and, frankly, funny.

Become so influential in AI-related legislation that Politico accuses effective altruists of having “[taken] over Washington” and “largely dominating the UK's efforts to regulate advanced AI”.

So your complaint is that people noticed that you exercised the power you always intended to exercise? God these frickers are insufferable. Politico is engaging in hyperbole and if you're going to be involved in politics, you just have to get used to this and stop flying off the handle every time a journ*lism says something you don't like.

Helped (probably, I have no secret knowledge) the Biden administration pass what they called "the strongest set of actions any government in the world has ever taken on AI safety, security, and trust.”

To the extent that this work was the SFBA Rationalist Cult, it wasn't present solely in the SFBA Rationalist Cult. To a certain extent I admire the fact that this has happened, but the credit does not go to the cult except in the cult's narcissistic brain bust, which is the problem everyone is trying to point you to when they talk about EA as a dipshit fraud factory.

Helped the British government create its Frontier AI Taskforce.

Same. If y'all weren't a dipshit fraud factory this might be a point in your favor, but it's still missing the point of the criticism.

Won the PR war: a recent poll shows that 70% of US voters believe that mitigating extinction risk from AI should be a “global priority”.

A single victory, poorly fought, by a writer who then got lost on twitter in the deluge of his own mania.

Helped organize the SecureDNA consortium, which helps DNA synthesis companies figure out what their customers are requesting and avoid accidentally selling bioweapons to terrorists

Fraud. Funding isn't doing the work.

Provided a significant fraction of all funding for DC groups trying to lower the risk of nuclear war.15

Your cult is engaged in fraudulent credit for this work because you think money is contributing when it's merely helping.

Donated a few hundred kidneys.16

Unironically, this one I'll give you, but you should talk about it less because the logical result is giving cult members enhanced status for organ donation and that's just the kind of incoherent spirituality that

These People Think They're Atheists

your types perform.

Sparked a renaissance in forecasting, including major roles in creating, funding, and/or staffing Metaculus, Manifold Markets, and the Forecasting Research Institute.

lmao THESE ARE WASTES OF TIME FOR IDIOTS YOU MADE THE WORLD A WORSE PLACE WITH THEM

(anything which can be predicted in a prediction market isn't worth predicting)

(unless you're an idiot who thinks winning points is inherently good)

(of course the midwit cult boasting about its points gathered for other people to work with boasts about its development of online point measuring)

(this is just too funny I can't believe this is real)

Donated tens of millions of dollars to pandemic preparedness causes years before COVID, and positively influenced some countries' COVID policies.

yeah you and Bill Fricking Gates

Played a big part in creating the YIMBY movement - I'm as surprised by this one as you are, but see footnote for evidence17.

Open Philanthropy's Wikipedia page says it was “the first institutional funder for the YIMBY movement”.

This one infuriates me. People worked for years to popularize YIMBY and you don't get to count funding an already existing movement as creating it.

These people are unpopular because they're frauds

And they're frauds because their narcissism is in constantly taking credit

FOR OTHER PEOPLE'S WORK

I think other people are probably thinking of this as par for the course - all of these seem like the sort of thing a big movement should be able to do.

That's not at all what I'm thinking: what I'm thinking is that no other movement would struggle with its own self-definition in such a narcissistic and fraudulent way.

But I remember when EA was three philosophers and few weird Bay Area nerds with a blog. It clawed its way up into the kind of movement that could do these sorts of things by having all the virtues it claims to have: dedication, rationality, and (I think) genuine desire to make the world a better place.

I don't actually think that anyone, anyone, is questioning whether or not the cultist desire to make the world a better place is genuine.

Just that: the weird bloggers? They should shut up and the movement of the SFBA Rationalists should disperse into the nonprofits it has helped develop.

To the extent that there's a community in the SFBA Rationalists, unironically they should convert to Christianity or at least just take this one little bit, Matthew 6, and tattoo it on their tramp stamp region so they don't get lost this way.

Scott Alexander's conclusion

Scott Alexander performs the ultimate idiocy of the point counters: he makes human lives fungible and cracks a joke about curing diseases and preventing terrorist attacks that happen to equal the number of lives they believe they've saved.

He handwaves around some numbers to make them holy, then praises EA in the public square.

>Still not impressed? Recently, in the US alone, effective altruists have:

ended all gun violence, including mass shootings and police shootings

cured AIDS and melanoma

prevented a 9-11 scale terrorist attack

Okay. Fine. EA hasn't, technically, done any of these things.

But it has saved the same number of lives that doing all those things would have.

About 20,000 Americans die yearly of gun violence, 8,000 of melanoma, 13,000 from AIDS, and 3,000 people in 9/11. So doing all of these things would save 44,000 lives per year. That matches the 50,000 lives that effective altruist charities save yearly18.

I don't hate this crude joke in isolation, it's just stupid after all of the FRAUD.

People aren't acting like EA has ended gun violence and cured AIDS and so on. all those things. Probably this is because those are exciting popular causes in the news, and saving people in developing countries isn't. Most people care so little about saving lives in developing countries that effective altruists can save 200,000 of them and people will just not notice. “Oh, all your movement ever does is cause corporate boardroom drama, and maybe other things I'm forgetting right now.”

Christ forgive me: but this is whiny narcissism. No Scott, it's not that people don't care about the lives that EA claims to have saved, it's that EA didn't save them, it just funded other people who deserve the credit more.

This is the cult's persecution complex, the performative whining of the final arc. "Any press is good press," Scott Alexander thinks as he prepares to plant another cult hook.

In a world where people thought saving 200,000 lives mattered as much as whether you caused boardroom drama, we wouldn't need effective altruism.

This is complete delusional narcissism at work. A stupid, and blatantly stupid, false statement justifying the existence of the cult.

These skewed priorities are the exact problem that effective altruism exists to solve - or the exact inefficiency that effective altruism exists to exploit, if you prefer that framing.

If this were all the SFBA Rationalist Cult was (this must be the shell game deBoer was pointing out, lmao I should have read his essay), this conversation wouldn't be happening because it would be one more non-profit doing non-profit things which isn't news and... that's ok! It's ok for not all mainstream news to be celebrating the work non-profits do!

Nobody cares about preventing pandemics, everyone cares about whether SBF was in a polycule or not.

This isn't remotely the problem with SBF, that's just the funny part of it.

Effective altruists will only intersect with the parts of the world that other people care about when we screw up; therefore, everyone will think of us as “those guys who are constantly screwing up, and maybe do other things I'm forgetting right now”.

When you stubbornly refuse to understand what your errors are, perform a cultish "call for criticism" which unsurprisingly does not result in reforming away the SFBA Rationalist cultishness, you deserve the reputation that you have as, oh what was it?" "children who fall apart when exposed to real world politics?"

And I think the screwups are comparatively minor. Allying with a crypto billionaire who turned out to be a scammer. Being part of a board who fired a CEO, then backpedaled after he threatened to destroy the company.

They might(?) be minor if the SFBA Rationalist Cult could actually reckon with them as mistakes on the scale of the massive continual streak of FRAUD which runs from the original high school dropout midwit, through SBF, to Scott Alexander.

These are bad, but I'm not sure they cancel out the effect of saving one life, let alone 200,000.

LMAO

LOL, EVEN

This is the way these Cartesian minds think: they think in offsets, they think spirituality is a matter of net good and net bad. It's all just points to them because they're hopelessly broken minds trying to arithmetic their way out of a social problem they refuse to believe they have.

(Somebody's going to accuse me of downplaying the FTX disaster here. I agree FTX was genuinely bad, and I feel awful for the people who lost money. But I think this proves my point: in a year of nonstop commentary about how effective altruism sucked and never accomplished anything and should be judged entirely on the FTX scandal, nobody ever accused those people of downplaying the 200,000 lives saved. The discourse sure does have its priorities.)

And whining about discourse is empty, you should shut up about things you can't change, Scott.

The discourse does prioritize mocking goofy and weird cults that

They Think They're Atheists

have nothing but fraud and a methodology indistinguishable from the American Civic Virtue already at work in the United States to distinguish them in discourse. Yes: discourse is functioning just fine. You just can't handle the heat of that which you have wrought.

Doing things is hard. The more things you do, the more chance that one of your agents goes rogue and you have a scandal. The Democratic Party, the Republican Party, every big company, all major religions, some would say even Sam Altman

lmao is Scott Alexander threatening Sam Altman?? This is the most interesting line.

• they all have past deeds they're not proud of, or plans that went belly-up. I think EA's track record of accomplishments vs. scandals is as good as any of them, maybe better.

But the Democratic Party is self-conscious of itself as a political party, it's not a cult with a denial complex. I joke about leading my own cult, for instance, but to the extent that it's true, the purpose of Impassionata Congress is to insulate me (and my 'followers') from cult mechanics by providing a structure which accommodates for the relation of speaker-listener. Companies are bound by their corporate charter and the cultish elements of CEOs is diminished through the configuration provided by the board of directors. Religions have to figure some shit out in order to function! (But they can't do that if they're in denial about what they are, and what SFBA Rationalism is is a cult.) (They think they're atheists, and atheists can't be in a cult.)

It's just that in our case, the accomplishments are things nobody except us notices or cares about.

THE NON PROFITS EXISTED

BEFORE YOU FUNDED THEM

YOU ABSOLUTE

NARCISSISTIC

MIDWIT

Like saving 200,000 lives. Or ending the torture of hundreds of millions of animals. Or preventing future pandemics. Or preparing for superintelligent AI.

Your organization is less capable of handling these things than mainstream electoral politics very specifically because you believe you are in any way separate from mainstream American politics.

But if any of these things do matter to you, you can't help thinking that all those people on Twitter saying EA has never done anything except lurch from scandal to scandal are morally insane.

SFBA Rationalists are politically insane, and you can tell because everyone who is against them must just be 'morally insane.' You see the cult mechanic at work? Isolate the followers with rhetoric like this.

That's where I am right now. Effective altruism feels like a tiny precious cluster of people who actually care about whether anyone else lives or dies, in a way unmediated by which newspaper headlines go viral or not.

If you actually believe that the SFBA Rationalist Cult is above newspaper headlines in a work that has headlines in it all over the place, you're an easy dupe and you belong in the SFBA Rationalist Cult.

My first, second, and so on to hundredth priorities are protecting this tiny cluster and helping it grow. After that I will grudgingly admit that it sometimes screws up - screws up in a way that is nowhere near as bad as it's good to end gun violence and cure AIDS and so - and try to figure out ways to screw up less. But not if it has any risk of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, or interferes with priorities 1 - 100

"I am 100% aware that I am in a cult, I will grow that cult, I will protect that cult, and I don't care to learn from any of its mistakes thus far."

The final section.

We're almost done.

Am I cheating by bringing up the 200,000 lives too many times?

No, just weakening your essay, your conclusion is 2x and maybe 3x too long for the actual points you are making.

People like to say things like “effective altruism is just a bunch of speculative ideas about animal rights and the far future, the stuff about global health is just a distraction”.

That is one criticism of some of the SFBA Rationalist Cult.

If you really believe that, you should be doubly amazed! We managed to cure AIDS and prevent 9/11 and so on as a distraction, when it wasn't even the main thing we wanted to be doing! We said “on the way to doing the other things we really care about, let's stop for a second to cure AIDS and prevent 9/11, it won't take too much time or resources away from the important stuff”. Why haven't any of you distraction-free people managed that?

Uh, you didn't do any of that, you didn't even manage it. You just funded it. And when you got directly involved you've *embarrassed yourselves and you're still in denial about that.

I don't think any of this is a distraction. The Democratic Party is anti-gun and pro-choice. The gun control isn't a ruse to trick pro-life people into joining the party, and the abortion rights aren't a smokescreen to deflect opposition from gun owners. Movements are coalitions. Sometimes this means different people with different priorities choose to work together. But other times it means the same people tend to share both priorities. People who are pro-choice are usually also anti-gun, and vice versa.

If your priority is taking credit, no one wants to build a coalition with you. It's not hard man.

And I notice that the tiny handful of people capable of caring about 200,000 people dying of neglected tropical diseases are the same tiny handful of people capable of caring about the next pandemic, or superintelligence, or human extinction. I think the common skill is trying to analyze what causes are important logically. Surprisingly, this comes up with different results than the usual strategy of caring about whatever is trending on Twitter today!

YOUR MEDIA LITERACY IS BADLY BROKEN

Some of those results are broadly popular, like saving 200,000 lives. Other results are broadly unpopular, like worrying about AI risk. But both sets of results come from the same process, and the people who get them are natural allies in a world where most people can't bring themselves to care about anything that isn't current front-page news.

You're not the only people who decided to do anything about the world and you don't have a monopoly on altruism. This is where the SFBA Rationalist Cult mentality is most grandiose and totalizing: you can't conceive of non-cult members as being on the same 'side' as you because you get distracted by twitter insults.

[some chart which talks about bait and switch in an article which is full of bait and switches]

lmao. I haven't been including the images because they're not good. Like they're actually well selected it's just that they're presented, by Scott, as if they're a mystery, a sort of art piece in contrast to his calm and logical argument. Unintentionally hilarious. They're honest frauds.

I don't want the takeaway from this post to be “Sure, you may hate EA because it does a lot of work on AI - but come on, it also does a lot of work on global health and poverty!” I'm proud of all of it. I believe - just like Geoff Hinton, Bill Gates, Sam Altman, Daniel Dennett, etc - that there's a pretty serious risk of human extinction from AI over the next few decades. I can't imagine believing this and not thinking it's important to prepare for. EA has done a great job working on this (see list of accomplishments above), and I think the AI and x-risk people have just as much to be proud of as the global health and animal welfare people.

If you were simply attributing this to "altruism" you might be correct to write this essay, but it would also be absurdly incoherent. Do you see? You formed a movement around "Altruism" and the only people who took it seriously were midwits. But you don't own altruism and defending "altruism" is incoherent. The only reason you can even write this essay, Scott, is you are the Bishop of a cult.

So my recommendation is that you look carefully into the research on what causes can most benefit the world - near-term, long-term, whatever seems most important to you after some honest study - and try to come up with some way to help them. If you want, take the Giving What We Can pledge to donate 10% of your income, or look at 80,000 Hours to see how you can get an altruistic career.

And there's the cult hook.

And whatever you do, do it quick, before the metronome swings back and all of this becomes popular again.

And there's the knowing wink that he's preaching to the choir to shore up support internally.

These People Believe They Are Atheists

And Atheists Can't Be In A Cult

But they're self conscious of the Effective Altruist movement as a spiritual mechanism for gathering and binding people, they just can't take the next step of perceiving the cult around them and attempting to mitigate the disastrous effects the cultishness has on their broader appeal.

The streak of fraud which runs through the SFBA Rationalist Cult and its various organizations aren't incidental mistakes taken by a developing movement, but reflections of a culture of narcissism which takes the persecution complex of the grandiose, runs it through a midwit consensus reality that could only have been achieved in the early Internet, and results in a reputational problem which is wholly deserved.

Here's the kicker

If Effective Altruism Fixed their Culture

It would just become Altruism, i.e.

It would cease to exist

It would just become the American Civic Virtue at work within the normal American Narcissism which is better modulated. A series of non-profits sharing a cult lineage that doesn't actually matter because the people in it balanced their spiritual identities around a less narcissistic collective practice.

Thus my advice to the SFBA Rationalists is: disperse. Throw down your idols now that you know you have them. If they had any decency or integrity they would log off and consider their mission accomplished.

That's what I plan to do once Impassionata Congress finishes this legislative session.

Thank you for reading.

I've been so depressed I've cried while masturbating, but I think I see the light once again. Everyone will reach turning points in their life. How you react in these moments determines who you are, what your resolve is, and how you will fare in the grueling game of life. Life isn't fair. Some people will find a relatively easy path, and will never have to encounter some of the harsher aspects of life such as poverty, loneliness, and social ostracization.

The person you are at birth will not be the person you are when you die (unless you die shortly after birth). Your personality will dissolve and rebuild several times, and you will become an entirely new person. For today's post, I'd like to describe the process of death and rebirth, and how drugs can help.

I really like the current font the site is using. They call it sewer side because the people who do it are shit. I wish my darn uber eats order would hurry up.

Carl Jung and Rebirth

I'll introduce Jung very briefly. He was a psychiatrist who was born in Switzerland in 1875. His father, Paul Jung, was a “Reformed Protestant vicar” (Wehr 1987; 9. while his mother, Emilie Preiswerk, suffered from mental illness. As a child, Jung had a deep interest in nature and, though he was surrounded by the church, he was unable to achieve any affinity for all the dogmatic side of religion. Paul was tolerant of his son's choices, hence when Carl decided that he would have to forego the feast of communion because nothing of religious importance happened for him there, Paul accepted.

This would not mark the end of Jung's relationship with religion, however, and his interest in the spiritual life of human beings would become a lifelong pursuit. In 1895, Jung began attending the University of Basel where he enrolled in the medical curriculum. There, Jung proved himself to be quite the polymath. In addition to being influenced by the philosopher Frederick Nietzsche, he also familiarised himself with all the occult-spiritist literature. Jung's life took a turn when he picked up a copy of Richard von Krafft-Ebing's textbook on psychiatry, which motivated him to abandon his studies in medicine to pursue psychiatry. In this field, he would have a notable intellectual impact.

Although not completely paralleling Freud's theories, Jung's theories branch off from them. He, like Freud, believes in the unconscious. However, he does not conceptualize it as a psychic realm exclusively housing repressed or forgotten contents. This, according to Jung, only describes the personal unconscious. There is a deeper layer of the unconscious Jung terms the collective unconscious which has contents and modes of behavior that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals.

Jung believes that the collective unconscious is populated by archetypes. In short, in much the same way that animals in the same species will inherit physical traits from their ancestors, so too are there psychic apparatus that are inherited in the form of archetypes. One of the archetypes Jung highlights is the rebirth archetypes which is ubiquitous in several religions and myths around the world. The most popular, of course, is the resurrection of Jesus Christ who defeats death. Though Jesus is divine, he takes the form of man, which in some ways suggests that we are all capable of overcoming death.

The death we overcome is not biological, it is psychic. You would be correct to also describe it as a transformation. A transformation can occur through an enlargement of personality whereby external contents are assimilated by the individual. Although the source of the personality enlargement is external, the individual must have within themselves the capacity to grow.

It's no coincidence that our heroes typically defy death. Allow me to explain. Jung lists identification with a cult hero as a means of bringing about the transformation of the personality. This occurs when one identifies with a god or hero who transforms in a sacred ritual. According to Jung, many religions and cult ceremonies are expressly intended to bring this identity about. In Christianity, he explains, the religion's theology came to include this form of the rebirth archetype over time as the outer God or Christ gradually became the inner Christ of the individual believer. WE ARE ALL CHILDREN OF GOD. WE ALL HAVE A CROSS TO BEAR, AND IF WE DON'T LOSE FAITH, WE WILL DEFY DEATH

Joseph Campbell and Rebirth

Born in 1904 in New York, Joseph Campbell's interest in mythology was sparked at a young age when his father took him and his younger brother to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in Madison Square Garden, and to the National Museum of History, and he soon recognized similarities between the stories and symbols of Native Americans and those from his Roman Catholic upbringing. Later in life, he would study Hinduism and find the same symbols once again. He would also study Arthurian medieval material, and he would recognize the same symbols. Upon entering Dartmouth College in 1921, he studied biology and mathematics. However, he would eventually transition to the Humanities, earning his master's degree in medieval literature in 1926.

In 1928, he discovered the works of Freud and Jung which would influence him greatly. Comparing the two, Campbell argues that the Freudian unconscious is biographical, not biological, while the Jungian unconscious is based on a biological point of view. Unlike Freud, Campbell points out, Jung recognized the collective unconscious which is universally shared and from which mythic symbols emerge. During his lifetime, Campbell would expand on Jung's ideas of archetypes in the realm of mythology, theorizing how these images manifest in the myths, stories, and traditions of disparate cultures around the world.

Campbell notes the particular importance of metaphorical death and rebirth, stating that “all children need to be twice born, to learn to function rationally in the present world, leaving childhood behind”. He claims that this wisdom is captured in the Biblical verse 1 Corinthians 13: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things”.

This death and rebirth, Campbell argues, is achieved through puberty rites. As Campbell explains: “in primal societies, there are teeth knocked out, there are scarifications, there are circumcisions, there are all kinds of things done. So you don't have your little baby body anymore, you're something else entirely”. Campbell even cites his own experiences of wearing short pants as a boy and wearing long trousers when he was older as a kind of puberty rite.

What must be noted is that rebirth is unattainable without the preceding death. The god of death is the lord of s*x. La petit morte. In this way, death and birth become intertwined concepts, and one cannot exist without the other.

In summary, the death and rebirth metaphorized in myth is not a clinical death that involves the cessation of all life processes. This is also the case with Freud's concept of Eros and Thanatos, and with Jung's death and rebirth archetypes. According to Campbell, within myths, death is a psychic process that we must all undergo if we are to achieve self-actualization.

Death and Rebirth via medicine

There is nothing wrong with looking for help. If you are sick, you see a doctor. It's that's simple. I had past experiences that made me deeply suicidal but I have gotten through them with some help from some pharmacological friends. Will I get everything I want? No, but that's okay. I shed my old self and a new one with different desires is born. I know you can do the same. To do so, you have to die first, and this is the scariest part. Just let the forces of life strike you with all their might. A little seedling of humanity will remain, and you will grow from it.

I don't advocate for drug use to solve all your problems. Everybody knows that's foolish. However, in times of crisis, it can be good to have something extremely powerful to basically destroy everything there and allow you to rebuild. Sometimes, drugs just help you by giving you false happiness. It's fake, but it gives you an opportunity to imagine an alternative reality to the depressing one you currently exist in. This is useful, as you know have something to have hope for.

Before I describe my drug experiences, I'd like to warn you that the substances I'm about to list are highly addictive and relatively easy to obtain. Do not go down this road unless sewer side is the only alternative. This is the chemo approach to mental health - drastic and deadly.

Admitting you need help

If you wind up in front of a doctor with significant self-harm, they'll almost certainly freak out. I've never met a doctor who took it even remotely well, and I don't blame them. When most people discuss self-harm, they're talking about cat scratches - you cut just enough to see blood. These cuts heal relatively quickly.

Then there's manic self-harm which you genuinely can't do without some manner of a mood disorder (or a disinhibited survival instinct). The accurate term for this is "self-mutilation", as you perform the type of injuries that will leave permanent scarring and sometimes nerve damage. These are burns or cuts that travel down to the dermis, and in extreme cases, the subcatenous layer. More often than not, stitches are required, though very few self-harmers will get them. To the average person, it's INSANE to deliberately mutilate yourself. A single razorblade cut will make most people wince, so to see a limb lacerated from top to bottom right down to the dermis is disturbing, to say the least. It looks like the acts of a disturbed and possibly dangerous person.

In this position, most doctors will refer you to a psychiatrist, but they'll also panic and prescribe you pretty much everything if they don't immediately institutionalize you. You will get very high doses of incredibly mind-altering substances, some of them highly addictive. This is a dangerous act, but it's also not a bad thing, as the doctor believes they are dealing with a life or death situation, and their primary aim is to sedate you at least to the point where you aren't a risk to yourself or others. It helps if you look relatively innocent (ie no tats or piercings, speaking clear English, and not acting like you know anything about pharmacological drugs).

The drugs I'm about to describe aren't SSRIs or Bupropion. Quite frankly, I have my doubts regarding SSRIs and their efficacy and I also believe they create chemical dependency which isn't always useful. Instead, I want to discuss the "destroy and rebuild" drugs that are highly psychoactive and will profoundly alter your state of consciousness.

Amitriptyline

This is the first line of defense against severe panic attacks, self-harm, and anxiety-induced insomnia. Doctors prefer it to benzos because it's not addictive. However, it does come with the downside of being quite easy to overdose with. According to research, it's one of the most common drugs used in successful sewer sides This is partially the reason why many doctors are moving away from it, and why my current doctor completely weaned me off it (I got much better shit though )

So what can you expect from Amitriptyline? Well, nothing and everything. Pop four or five and in about ten minutes, you'll be incapable of feeling any negative emotions. You won't feel any positive ones either. It's just a state of extreme numbness. Someone could get stabbed up in front of you and it wouldn't really click that you're witnessing a tragedy. You'd just accept it without much complaint. Wait a few more minutes, and your bed will become irresistible.

The benefit of Amitriptyline is that it gives you a break. If you're being assaulted by depression or anxiety, it'll disappear entirely for at least 12 hours. You won't be productive during this time, but your old negative mind will begin to die as you get the chance to think of anything but your misery. I highly recommend it.

It doesn't have much recreational value. If you're happy, there is not much joy to be had in switching off. Just go out and enjoy life instead of lying comatose for half the day. For anyone suicidal or in mental anguish, it feels like the hand of god rescuing you from heck.

Side story: I failed my driver's test 3 times before I took Amitriptyline for my test and passed. It calmed my nerves and sedated me enough to complete the test. You're not supposed to drive or operate heavy machinery on it but if it works it works.

Rebirth value: 6

Benzodiazepines

I'll call them benzos from now on. You've heard them rapped about, and they come under many different brand names - Urbanol, Xanax, Valium, Klonopin, Jordan Peterson's breakfast. It's all the same shit (mostly) - just a matter of dosage. HGHLY addictive, HIGHLY dangerous. I warn you not to touch them unless you are genuinely a harm to yourself.

I can't begin to describe how much I love benzos. They are the evil-stopper. The pauser of pain. The muter of misery. Benzos don't make you happy. They make you not sad. I've read several posts on Reddit of people complaining that benzos don't do anything. That's because you're happy already! The drug is the true shit-tester. If you're playing at depression, they will do nothing for you. If you have a genuine serotonin deficit, it will feel like heaven come true. It's the only drug I've taken that genuinely feels like that Simpsons scene.

Pop 4 or 5, smoke some weed, and put on some music. The rest of your day is about to get perfect. It's really hard to explain what benzos do to your memory. I kind of have bullet-point facts in my head of how I feel on benzos but quite frankly I don't truly remember any of my benzo escapades. It's all a black hole. I just wake up in the morning knowing I had the best night ever.

Benzos have massive downsides. The chemical binds to your GABA receptors, which are the same receptors alcohol binds to. Consequently, you'll experience many of the effects of alcohol (stumbling, slurring, impulsiveness) without ever feeling shitfaced. You will feel 100% sober as you stumble around your house, get into your car, and speed to a drive-through at 2 AM with your headlights off. I've had experiences of tumbling down my stairs in my apartment with a tray full of food, and also trying to sort out my Pokemon cards, only to have them fly everywhere.

People do insane, life-ruining shit on benzos, and they remember none of it at all. Think about the last few years - if you recall a politician, celebrity, or public figure acting insane in public or you've seen someone being weird on an airplane, there's an 80% chance they were on benzos and maybe decided to drink as well. If you've done benzos, you'll recognize that "lucid insanity" very easily.

That lady there? OBVIOUSLY took benzos. No doubt in my mind. I've been lucky enough to not do anything crazy on benzos (that I remember lol).

Here's my theory: if you're suffering from heightened anxiety or depression, benzos will chill you out in a way that does not feel "wrong" or "drug abusey" at all. It feels like doctor-prescribed medicine and there is nothing sinister about it. If you decide to do them for fun, it will unearth all your repressed shit and after you mentally blackout, your body will continue to act out your repressed desires.

In my case, benzos make me read random articles online for hours before going to sleep and feeling happy that I went through a night without self-harming. I have no doubt that if I took them while not in a depressive episode, I would probably see manifestations of my sexual repression.

I would honestly would not recommend benzos except in a worst-case scenario. They're so good, they're bad. They will not fix your problems, just give you a brief break to remember that it's possible to not feel depressed all the time. For many, that's all they need. For most, they'll take this pill and ruin their lives with it. It also causes brain damage when used long-term.

If you're intent on using benzos recreationally, practice moderation. Additionally, make sure you tell yourself that it's an experiment you'll never repeat. There's no point in stating recommended dosage because it entirely depends on what kind of benzo you've been prescribed. I'd tell you not to do too much but if you get high and you have them at home, you're going to wake up with half of them gone even if you decided to take only one. Redosing is nigh impossible not to do once you're high.

Rebirth value: 6

Zolpidem

Well, well, well. What do we have here? The good stuff. The holy grail of pharma drugs, not counting opioids. It gets no better than this. From now on I'll be referring to Zoldipem as Ambien, but it's sold under a few other names including Nyxe for poorcels on generics.

Ambien is typically prescribed as a sleeping agent, though you'll also get prescribed it temporarily if you're at a point of crisis, especially if you're feeling self-deletey or are self-harming. It's better to be sedated for a while if the alternative is sewer side.

You need an incredibly small dose for the fun to start - about 5mg - and you'll have to decide to stay up after you're hit by incredible drowsiness about 15 minutes in. If you manage to stay up, you'll feel the greatest chill you've felt in your life. An armed robber could enter your house, and you'll help him load stuff into his truck with a smile on your face. You could sit down for dinner with Satan and feel sympathetic to his cause. However, unlike benzos, there are none of the shit-faced effects. You'll walk straight and look fine. Ambien is the best of benzos without the bad stuff.

You can take it at higher doses, but don't overdo it. Ambien makes you puke at high doses, and you run a risk of instant blackout. This is a deadly combination, as it leaves you liable to choking on your own puke. My advice is don't surpass 10mg. 15mg at most, unless you have a high tolerance (but seriously, don't abuse these drugs to the point of having a high tolerance). I've seen Reddit posts of people taking 100mg and that's insane and possibly deadly. I'd probably puke my bowels out. Nevertheless, I understand the pain, and for some, being knocked out for 24hrs+ is genuinely the best move they can make at that point in time.

Once you're in the Ambien zone, a warmness fills your body and your faculties of memory switch off entirely. No new memories will be formed for the next few hours. This is the "blackout" but don't be fooled into thinking you won't be 100% active during this time. The more you do Ambien, the more you're able to grip onto small glimpses of your time on the drug, but it's never the whole thing. Just still frames of a much longer video.

Unlike benzos, Ambien gets weird. Like, borderlines psychedelic weird. It makes the world wavy, you can hallucinate sounds and see colors bleeding out of objects. Much like psychedelics, it also gives you that "safe space" effect, allowing you to think about traumatic events directly without breaking down. This is INCREDIBLY useful for anyone seeking closure or to move past a painful experience.

I'm on ambien right now and it feels great. The fan's wind on my skin feels euphoric. I can think about anything and I'm not really disturbed or saddened by it. There's a strong desire to redose but I know better. Just ride the wave

Rebirth value: 8

Benzo and Ambien

I tried this combo last night. Don't mix them. 20mg ambien + 20mg benzos = instant blackout followed by puking all over my bed. It's not like coke or meth - there is no recreational value from going too far with it. There is a sweet spot for either drug and if you go past it, only bad things happen. You don't need to mix ambien with anything but weed. The same applies for benzos.

I don't think anything too bad happened last night except I sent the same work email to the same address three times in a row. I know it's weird, but I'm hoping it's a "whoops" weird and not "is this person on drugs?" kind of weird. I also had a bunch of messages from work, but it was nothing related to my actions. Folks at work are so nice to me, they're genuinely good people. If I told them I'm a degenerate depressive they'd probably help me without judging tbh but I'm smart enough to know they're not family lol never taking the mask off in front of them and neither should you

Drugs and inceldom

I was in a really dark hole, but I see the light again, and it's partially thanks to drugs. If I had a wife who loved me and had hope that I could start a nuclear heterosexual family, I would never touch a mind-altering substance ever again, but that's not the reality we're dealing with.

If you're an incel it's not the end of the world. Yes, it sucks, but you can still construct a livable life. Principally, you need four things:

• home

• vehicle

• money

• health insurance

I was going to add media, but I don't think it's vital. In fact, seeing relationships and hearing love music is probably going to deteriorate your mental health. Lock onto a singular goal and direct your fantasies toward it. Don't succumb to the temptations of imaginary friends, it keeps the social faculties of your brain active, preventing them from eventually rotting away and leaving you with no social drive. Don't think about people, don't imagine yourself in a relationships, and in public divert your gaze from women as they're only going to trigger fantasies.

It also helps if you present somehow androgynously. With long hair, a soft voice, no facial hair, and tons of pink/purple clothing, I often get misgendered. I've noticed that people give me that "frick, here's a loser" stare far less and instead I get more of a "oh, its an insecure girl" look which is a lot more sympathetic.

Don't look at doctors/psychiatrists as humans. They're robots and your last lifeline. If you need to speak to them, just switch your brain off and speak the truth, regardless of how cringe it is. They'll give you what you need to continue your incel life with some relative comfort. Another thing - most doctors aren't going to be mad at you. They just want to help! This is especially important if you're self-mutilating i.e. reaching dermal layer. You have a 100% chance of getting an infection, multiple infections in fact. Infections find their way into sterile hospitals, there is no way you're going to avoid them in your shitty home. A doctor will give you anti-infection medication to help when you do BTFO yourself.

As you incelmaxx, you're going to hit walls - if you live in an apartment, you'll probably hear your neighbors have s*x, you'll see couples in public, you'll realize 80%+ of music is about love/women which causes you to greatly narrow what you listen to. There are a million and one reminders that you fricked up severely and you'll never be a normie. Breathe through it. This too shall pass.

Also, bear in mind, nobody becomes an incel by mistake, especially as you get older. If you're being rejected, there's probably a very good reason why. It is moral to distance yourself from others, as you are doing them a favor.

Is inceldom inevitable? For some of us, yes. I do think we do things that push us in that direction. My biggest regrets:

• leaving groomercord dramasphere and losing my last social group

• not implementing the "just be first" strategy and finding a gf in grade school

• wasting years on asexuality

• indulging fantasies of escaping inceldom

Lastly, your imagination is your strongest tool. I truly believe that any incel should practice writing daily. You can create stories that perfectly suit your preferences and tastes, and they'll be void of any of those painful themes that upset you. The more you use your imagination, the greater the world worlds you can create, and the more you can escape from reality. It helps because mass-produced media is all about love and relationships.

There is life at the bottom. It's not a good life, but it's a life you can make worth living.

Thoughts on inceldom

Normies have break-ups and they recover by rebounding to the next partner. Incels get rejected and that's that. I find it difficult to accept that this is a matter of personality. The most vile humans to ever live, none of them are incels. Not one. Let's see:

• Gary Ridgway - killed over 60 women, got married twice

• Vlad the Impaler - over 40,000 deaths attributed to him, has 5 children

• Albert Einstein - openly hated women, still married and had children

• Arthur Schopenhauer - Literally the most prolific misogynist in Western philosophy and is considered the father of Western woman-hating. Had a wife and children, some of them as a result of adultery

• Jerry Givens - One of America's most prolific executioners who admits that he killed innocent people. He died married with two children

• Darrell Brooks - multiple felonies and no high school even prior to the Waukesha incident. Still has multiple children.

It sickens me to my stomach to know these folks are more attractive to women than I am. How do you not feel worthless when the bare facts are laid out like this? There's a simple explanation for this - height. Look at the percentage of evil people who get married, then look at the percentage of short people who get married. The pattern is 100% clear, being evil is less of a dating detriment than your height as a male. This article is the most depressing thing I've read in a while.

It has long been understood that tall people generally exhibit a variety of positive attributes: they are healthier, stronger, smarter, more educated, more sociable, more liked, and more confident than short people. Hence, it is not surprising that they are richer, more influential, more fertile, happier, and longer-lived than short people

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1570677X15000398

Studies that attempt to research correlations between height and number of sexual partners don't even include my height because folks my height are expected to be fricking incels.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230216073416/https://sites.psu.edu/siowfa16/2016/10/21/does-height-make-you-more-attractive

I challenge you right fricking now to find me a bigger predictor of male marriage. Nothing predicts your romantic fate more than height.

CONCLUSION

If you go around Reddit, you'll discover plenty of nurses and pharmacists sharing info on new drugs that are being abused and how to spot folks trying to acquire them. Such medical practitioners are violating their Hippocratic oath in addition to just being square pricks. "Oh noo boo hoo don't let them buy DXM noooooo you can't see demon spiders!" By turning people away from the relatively safe drugs, you're pushing them to street drugs which are more likely to frick them up.

On a side note, DXM is alright if you're used to self-experimentation. I tried it a couple of times. The first, I found myself in a spaceship, listening to A Tribe Called Quest as I enjoyed the groovy adventure. The second time I projectile vomited and experienced no pleasure or high.

If someone wants to do drugs, they're sick. Sober people typically receive their happiness from their relationships and achievements, and drugs are a distraction from that. I've never seen my mom take a drop of alcohol, because she has a husband and children to fill her life. For the rest of us, we'll take slivers of pleasure wherever we find them. Don't thwart us, or else you'll leave us with nothing but misery. Pharmacists be like "No, you can't have happy pills. Get back to your suffering." This is cruel and immoral.