Still one of my favorite pieces of drama I witnessed, a months-long spergout that involved forum espionage, leftist infighting, chuddery, and tons of funny paranoia. I posted about it as it was happening on the old place but I figure I'll do a better write-up here.

Background

Once upon a time there was a gayming website called Gaming Age, with their forum called the Gaming Age Forum, commonly abbreviated as GAF. Eventually Gaming Age went under, but the top two jannies (Evillore and Bishoptl) were able to move their community to a new forum, appropriately called NeoGAF. It had a reputation for aggressive jannying which wasn't entirely unfounded but overall it was a pretty cool and chill place to talk vidya, and imo probably the most fun forum of the aughts. Cracks started to show in 2013 with the most important war of our lifetimes, G*merGate. Still, things were mostly fine as long as you avoided the dedicated containment thread. Trump winning in 2016 brought the place to its knees with libs screaming for the jannies to clamp down on rightoids, jannies mass-banning anyone they suspect of liking Orange Man, everyone screaming for Evillore's head since he wasn't as left as people think, and overall an implosion imminent. A Japanese American poweruser called Cerium saw the writing on the wall and built a clone. Within a year Evillore got #metoo'd, causing an exodus to Cerium's new ResetEra (geddit? Neo -> Reset, Age -> Era). Cerium was much more of an absentee leader than Evillore was and didn't interact much beyond technical issues before selling the site, which had the benefit of avoiding a “the owner is an evil chud” controversy but indirectly lead to an “inmates running the asylum" environment for a couple years until he promoted an unpaid janny (B-dubz) to paid janny to manage in his stead.

NeoGAF founders Tyler Malka (Evillore) and Tim Lewenson (Bishoptl). Evillore never worked in gaming besides running the forum but Bish is a genuine industry figure since the '90s who worked on stuff like Turok, Dawn of War, Apex Legends, and is currently an EA exec

Like how every Reddit clone is founded because Reddit is too leftoid and so gets plagued by insufferable rightoids, ResetEra was ultimately founded because NeoGAF was too rightoid and as such is plagued by insufferable leftoids, resulting in constant infighting and drama. One such instance lead to the banning of poweruser KetKat, the unofficial leader of ResetEra's many s (henceforth known as TransEra after the groomercord they operated out of) and the one who ran the TransEra groomercord. Ketkat basically never did anything at all but stir up shit and harass the jannies but every attempt to ban led to huge drama and eventually weeping jannies rolling over and showing their bellies and begging for mercy that never came, until finally after four or five "perma-bans" one finally stuck. This becomes important later.

Initial Drama

One day TransEra decided that the upcoming video game CyberPunk 2077 was a transphobic Nazi game because an ad shows an in-game ad featuring a peepee girl. Unusually, this was enough of a stretch that nobody else on the Internet (including the other really woke sites) shared the same view. For some reason this controversy was entirely confined to ResetEra, which nobody found suspicious.

TransEra demands that all discussion regarding Cyberpunk be banned and that the United States government sanction Poland for allowing this game to be made within their borders. The jannies of course don't want to ban talking about what may be the biggest game of the year (this was still when Era had pretentions of being a gaming forum, years later they would cave and ban Harry Potter) while all the other users were just adding the s to their block lists. The latter just makes the s angrier of course.

The jannies eventually take action by making and sticking a containment thread. It's not super dramatic but it's a good overview of where they're directing their ire at a given moment, and to watch them seethe. That page I linked features:

• People whining about how the game has trans actors and why aren't they protesting?

• A in an arranged marriage saying something about being an "angel's advocate"

• Someone realizing that there are literally zero FtM s on the forum, they are all men in dresses

• A guy saying it's pathetic to talk about video games on a video game forum

The sole basis of the transphobia accusations was this pre-release screenshot

The jannies next decide that they'll allow discussion but ban it on Trans Remembrance Day or whatever, which would be the week the game came out. The company proceeded to undercut them by delaying the game past that. Searching for some other way to virtue signal the jannies create an "Official Megathread" for the game and immediately lock it with a message about respecting trans rights or something, which of course nobody sees because nobody can post in it and so it falls off the front page. Somebody else creates a Spoiler Thread which the jannies initially allow until it gets so clogged up with s seething that they lock it. The s start to realize that they aren't getting the attention they want.

Nazi Infiltrators

Having been put on everybody's block list, TransEra realizes the only way to get people to notice them again is to have one of their own make the Cyberpunk 2077 Official Thread (OT). As the jannies have declared that the OT will be the only allowed thread on the game besides the transphobia sticky, this will allow the s to monopolize discussion on the game and force people to unblock the OP if they want the thread to be visible. The problem is that you have to reserve the right to make the OT in advance (months in advance in the case of major AAA releases), and the current OT guy is a fellow named Black Chamber who is not trans, is quite excited (maybe unhealthily so) about the game, and still thinks ResetERA is primarily a gaming forum and not a progressive hugbox.

So TransEra sets to wrestling the thread away from him. They accuse him of being a paid astroturfer and other various things until a prominent named Kyuuji leaks a four-month old PM from him (which can't be seen anymore but it was apparently mildly dismissive). Normally leaking PMs is a bannable offense but when a janny points this out he is demodded and temp banned for using the wrong pronouns to describe Kyuuji.

ResetERA founder Isamu Fukui (Cerium). He made hundreds of thousands off of Era every year and cashed out for a cool $4.5 million in 2021, which was controversial since he never did anything to manage the website, and NeoGAF owner Evillore had famously claimed to have turned down a similar amount to sell GAF

The jannies eventually declare that Black Chamber will be allowed to make the OT (in all likelihood he's finished it by now) in exchange for being banned for a month afterwards and there being a post about transphobia stickied to the top of every page. This doesn't appease TransEra because of course the point is to make the OT themselves to force people to engage with them. Tensions rise as people who just want to talk about video games start to rise up.

Users desperately try to figure out what the required opinion is

The s finally find Black Chamber's Achilles heel: he doesn't like The Last of Us, which is very much a sacred cow on Era. His fate is sealed when somebody digs through his Twitter and finds a two-year old post suggesting he's a Republican which is literally a bannable offense. Black Chamber is perma-banned and the jannies encourage users to doxx suspected Republicans, going further in a later post where they say janny duties will now include going through users' social media (which is very much in their power because they require your real name on account creation). They also lock every thread about the game except the trans containment thread. Alas this is a pyrrhic victory for TransEra as rather than give them the OT the jannies say they'll just make it themselves.

Black Chamber melts down on Twitter over his ban and goes back to NeoGAF. This leads users to suspect that he was a neo-nazi infiltrator sent by Evillore to destroy ResetEra from the inside. Some writes a 7000 word melt down.

Image unrelated

Janny Infighting

Cuberpunk 2077 finally comes out and TransEra, high on victoriously chasing out a chud, celebrate by playing it despite it being literal genocide. But in a community this dramatic any peace is temporary. The first sign that things are going to explode is that AndroidSophia, the site's highest-ranking janny who was brought on specifically as a concession to TransEra during a prior spergout, has lost her janny tag. Normally TransEra would be up in arms about this, but now they're suspiciously silent, making it clear that they're behind her demopping.

Meanwhile, on the Secret Resetera Groomercord Server where the mods and powerusers hang out, a janny named Poodlestrike gets in a fight with a trans user and bans them on the main forum. One of the banned 's friends throws a fit on Era and is perma banned for "Does not want to be here." TransEra begins throwing a fit and pooping up the front page whining about the jannies and leaking DMs. Small collection of cryposts here.

Rather than apologize Poodlestrike fights back, confirming that the reason AndroidSophia no longer had her mop was because she was bullied by TransEra during groomercord conference (called Summits, ERA regularly has them when a minority group - be they Asians or PC g*mers - is aggrieved) between the jannies and TransEra and resigned "in tears." Proving that they're real women TransEra refuses all accountability - "This is freaking gaslamping!" "Maybe we'll stop telling you to go frick yourself if you stop being a transphobic b-word!" AndroidSophia herself shows up and confirms the accusations, and also says that she literally almost died writing about Cyberpunk because it's so transphobic.

Jannies and s proceed to scream at each other,, calling each other lyers and "rat-frick cowards." BIPOCs get mad that mayos are appropriating their oppression.

Alright, the safe word is ‘janny brutality'

Surprise Twist!

The drama reaches its climax when furry biofoid janny Nepenthe who was in the groomercord conference writes a 5000 word screed, helpfully documented here. She also posts this screenshot of the very first of the list of demands TransEra was making:

Do you remember way back at the beginning when I mentioned the jannies having banned poweruser and unofficial Top , KetKat, a year before? It turns out the entire Cyberpunk-transphobia debacle was some ridiculous groomercord gayops by KetKat to force the jannies to come to the table and relitigate her permaban. Nobody actually thought Cyberpunk was transphobic, the whole thing was a coup attempt cooked up by a conspiracy in a smoky chatroom who knew the mods wouldn't give in to banning the game and so a stink could be raised. Even better, KetKat already had an alt (Hexe, which the jannies knew about and turned a blind eye too) which she used on the site, this absolute dramaqueen decided that orchestrating six months of screeching was preferable to going under a different username.

KatKat shows up on her alt and writes a 3000 word rant about how she totally didn't want to come back anyways, and is immediately banned as Nepenthe reveals that she's suddenly non-binary, which makes her a double minority since she's also black. Some s show up and try to resist but it is too late, the war is lost and anybody who complains get sniped.

The who wrote the 7000 word essay earlier outdoes himself by writing another 5000 words and then quoting two other 5000 word posts in full at the end. He doxxes himself, gets permabanned for pinging, then cries to the mods and has his account wiped.

Epilogue

Although they ban any s who act up too much, the jannies ultimately fail to take any lasting measures (like banning everyone on the TransEra groomercord, in particular power user Kyuuji who was pretty much acting as a front for Ketket) despite otherwise being extremely quick to pull the "Banned for engaging in bad faith" card on anybody else. Pooping up and making a mockery out of the site in an effort to blackmail the staff apparently isn't bad faith enough. The result is that even though TransEra didn't succeed in their goals, they got confirmation that they can cause as much chaos as they like as long as they don't directly insult the staff or the forum.

So when Hogwarts Legacy rolled around and TransEra started to act up the jannies immediately caved and banned any mention of the game to avoid a repeat, to the point where when the game sold well people couldn't post weekly sales charts without editing the name out. Another win for trans rights!

The game that shall not be named

Hi dramafrens!!

Have any of you heard of this obscure little indie game company called Valve? You may have heard of them from niche titles such as:

Half-Life

Portal

Only the biggest gaming platform of all time, Steam

But today we're talking about a game very close to my heart: Team Fortress 2! Valve's hit first person class-based team shooter is an iconic game, earning it a place of glory amongst all vidya and entrenching it in internet and meme culture, and even a somewhat recent meme trend depicting the TF2 characters as buff, totally heterosexual Wagnerite Ziggers has produced some of the shiniest gemeralds of all time

(video courtesy of @CREAMY_DOG_ORGASM_fan17)

It's really close to my all time favorite game and definitely my most played. Countless hours were sucked from my childhood as baby me learned to use my first slurs whenever I came across a particularly annoying enemy Demoman

Which is why it's all the sadder that I'm now talking about its spectacular fall from grace.

The Beginning of the End

Meet Your Match

TF2 had a reputation of being a quite regularly updated game, with a major content release happening around 3-5 times a year. Besides usual gripes from boomers these updates were pretty well received, and I certainly have held a positive view of almost all of them although that could just be me yearning for my teenage years.

However, on July 7th of 2016 the most controversial TF2 update to date released: Meet Your Match.

Before this update all TF2 players would play the game through a generic server browser. Valve ran their own public servers right alongside all the community made ones, and filtering for a server you wanted was incredibly easy and streamlined. You could filter by player count, full/empty, whether or not the server used the shitty Valve Anti-Cheat, whether custom decals were allowed, you name it. Everything was hosted on the server browser, it held everything from official Valve servers to servers run by the dregs of society. I fondly remember joining a server when I was about 11 running a map that had furry porn plastered all over the walls you never forget your first time, !furries.

So what did Meet Your Match change? Well, it didn't remove the server browser. Not outright. But it did take all official Valve-ran servers off the browser and move them into a shitty matchmaking system No longer could you filter for a specific Valve server running your favorite map, you now have to queue up for matchmaking in a party with up to five friends (no more just joining your friends through Steam or the server browser!), have a certain list of maps selected, and pray to god it lands you in a game within the next 15 minutes. Even worse, since the matchmaking system's job is to get you into a game by any means necessary, it could land you in a game with no players or a game about to end and switch maps to a shitty one you don't like. Additionally those official Valve servers got way shittier, due to the removal of the ability to switch teams, removal of sprays (basically the ability to plaster a custom image onto any surface you want ), and the increasingly outdated Valve Anti-Cheat system being easier to exploit by cheaters. Oh, and those five friends you get to party up with? They will only be on your team, meaning you can only have friendly competition with these friends if somebody gets auto-balanced (which remember is a necessity since you can't change teams manually to even the balance )

That server browser still exists, but it's been relegated to its own separate tab and no longer has any Valve-ran games on it. That would be fine if you don't like Valve servers, (and who would? ) but the average TF2 player is just going to hit “find game” and not bother with the server browser, leaving a bunch of half-empty, struggling community servers—not to mention that most of the community servers are shit themselves, but for other reasons; no way in heck am I downloading 13 trillion Touhou reskin mods just to play on a shitty weeb server!

The update understandably made a lot of people upset, me included! But we had no idea how much worse it was going to get.

Jungle Inferno, or, Pain of Neglect

Released on October 20th of 2017, Jungle Inferno was a pretty bog-standard update, as far as things go. A few new weapons, some balances, a few new maps which were mostly shitty, we've all heard it before. The problem? It was the last time Valve would do anything significant with the game. Any updates past Jungle Inferno were repeating seasonal events, and the last Saxxy Awards (the TF2 community's version of the Oscars, where people would create kino animations using Valve's Source Filmmaker) ever to be held to this date

“But Shelly,” you might ask, “you said there were still seasonal event updates! Surely stuff was being added then, right? ” Well, yes. But it wasn't Valve. Every Halloween and Christmas Valve would have some intern scour the top rated maps, cosmetics, weapon skins, and taunts from the community workshop. So surely game's health is in the community's hands, and doing alright, yes? Well…

All of this shit was just bad, frankly. Often times the skins had missing textures, the cosmetics were r-slurred and unwanted or even outright broken, the taunts didn't work, all things that could go weeks without being fixed. Besides, hats and skins don't affect the gameplay!

Well maps do affect the gameplay. But they were all shittier even than the skins! A prime example is Wutville, a community made Christmas map. I think I'll let this image of the first attacker spawn and the known bugs list speak for themselves.

So we have a map that is basically a long, sniper-heaven corridor with no flank routes, tons of bugs, and is a visual fricking mess to boot! And this is just one extreme example of many broken community maps; don't even get me started on Bread Space, which started the defending team out facing the wrong way, so half the team would obliviously walk the entire way back to their last point in the setup phase! It was obvious that Valve was not bothering to playtest anything they were putting into the game, let alone make it themselves.

Why was Valve refusing to work on such an influential title? Despite all their decisions the TF2 player counts were continuing to grow, almost suspiciously so… (more on that later ) surely if Valve put in the effort they could bring ever more players in and just get that much more money from anyone participating in its famous economy. It has a lot to do with their company work philosophy: on the outside, they claim to avoid “treadmill work” and prioritize employee freedom by letting them work on any projects they had passion for. Beneath this stupid pseudo-commie work structure however everyone knew Valve operated on the principle of “Do nothing and let Steam make us infinite money.” They didn't need to work on TF2 because it made them zero billions of dollars.

Attack of the Machines

The Sniperbots

In 2020, there was a source code leak, leading many people to fear the worst. A lot of rumors were in the air at this time, everything from exploits in the code being used to hack accounts to even in-game doxxing. While none of these ever really came true, there was certainly an opportunity for cheaters to exploit a vulnerability in the game. And exploit they did!

A bit of background is needed. Basically there are nine classes in TF2, but out of all of them none is more powerful than the Sniper. With two clicks he can instantly kill 5 out of those 9. In a game played by humans, the main barrier to playing Sniper is the human player's skill and ability to quickly land those instakill headshots. A good player can theoretically steamroll the entire enemy team only by playing Sniper, but nobody but the most turbovirgin neurodivergents could ever hope to reach the skill level needed.

A robot though…

With the game's guts on display for the world to see, people naturally quickly made programs that could run an account on TF2 playing sniper, which would proceed to walk straight into combat and land every headshot, wiping the entire enemy team but it wouldn't just be one, it would be five, ten, fifteen sniperbots with absolutely zero counterplay pooping up entire game servers. As expected, these bots were also equipped with the latest in slur technology and would frequently call votekicks on human players

It was a dark time, and still is. These bots are still running around, and the game is absolutely unplayable outside of peak hours. The bots don't stray outside of casual matchmaking so community servers are fine, but the same problems I already highlighted with those servers still exist today

Valve managed to “fix” the slur-spamming problem by removing chat permissions for all free to play players. I don't think I need to mention why this is a bad idea. In addition to that the bots aren't really fixed, they still flood casual servers and kick every human player out. To this day, it seems Valve has no intention of actually fixing this issue.

#SaveTF2

The problem eventually became Reddit's problem. /r/tf2 is the epitome of a modern day vidya subreddit, astroturfed to heck, filled with shitty memes and r-slurred redditors who think they can accomplish anything by making smug comments. Their solution to the bots, the content drought, and the general decline of the game? Be heckin' wholesome 100 about it, and start a hashtag

The SaveTF2 movement started with the general goal of getting Valve to fix their darn game. Get rid of the bots was the first priority, and after that people generally thought that Valve would notice TF2 as profitable with the surge of new players coming into a fresh, shiny, bot-free classic game! After all, TF2 was still reaching record numbers of concurrent player counts, () imagine what new heights it could reach from there!

It became fully Redditized incredibly quickly. Constant mentions of Valve and Valve developers on Xwitter, r-slurred “spread the word” posts all over reddit in unrelated subs, and getting the voice actors to go along with their shitty memes are just a few of the regular Keanu Chungus redditor actions you would expect from such a movement.

The Valve Response

In May of 2022, the TF2 Twitter account posted this:

https://x.com/TeamFortress/status/1529970640224018433

This lead many to rejoice in the triumph of the SaveTF2 movement. Honestly things were looking pretty… hopeful? Maybe the Reddit activism got to them? After years and years of total radio silence it looked like Valve might actually care about this ‘dead game' that continued to grow.

An update was promised and actually… delivered? In July of 2023, TF2 players got the Summer Update! What was in this update, you ask?

• Community-made cosmetics

• Community-made skins

• Community-made maps

Sound familiar? But hey, at least the wholesome reddit seal was added into the game! (No, I'm not joking)

This satisfied the redditors though, and the SaveTF2 movement gradually lost momentum, sputtered, and died. All the while, the bots still ran free.

The Coming of the VLTIMATE TRVTH NVKE

On April 30th of this year, a long time TF2 YouTuber by the name of ZestyJesus woke up and dropped the fattest trvthnvke ever made on the TF2 community:

For those of you who don't want to watch an hour long video, the TL;DR is that after scraping years of data from third party sites and even neurodivergentally collecting his own information, this guy came to a frightening conclusion… You know how I said that despite everything, in spite of the bots, the content drought, the shitty community made updates, in spite of all of it, TF2's player count continued to grow?

In the video, this guy provides pretty darning evidence that over 70% of TF2's reported players… are bots. But not those sniper bots I've been talking about previously! No, these bots exist specifically to sit in private servers with TF2 running in text-mode (no graphics to reduce RAM usage) and periodically receive item drops, courtesy of Valve's age old gacha system. These bots then sell these items for irl money, inflating both the in-game economy and the reported player counts. The actual player counts? Declining, and had been since Meet Your Match.

ZestyJesus took aim at the Redditors in his closing statements in the video, highlighting how much of a massive failure SaveTF2 was and what an embarrassment it was that the movement lost steam as soon as Valve threw them a bone that looked and tasted exactly like all the other bones they had been thrown for seven years.

So naturally, the redditors crawled out of the woodwork.

#FixTF2: The Redditor Strikes Back

Not taking any hints as to the actual point of the ZestyJesus, some clown by the name of WeezyTF2 releases this video:

Basically he's just saying the movement needs to start again with a different name. TF2 players, still stunned from the TRVTHNVKE fallout, have begun clinging onto this new movement as of late. It basically just involves a lot more whining, which at least does more than the reddit activism they were doing before.

Another YouTuber by the name of shounic, who mostly does explanations of the game's mechanics and code released this video a mere day ago, highlighting all the barriers to actually fixing the game and all the pitfalls this new movement could fall into:

And at around this time TF2 starts getting massively review bombed!!

At least reviews are an actual form of protest. But what about other Valve games? It appears that Half-Life 2 has also been the target of a few stinkers!

Surely this will go well.

Conclusion

Redditors suck and I hate them all. I hope Valve does something with my favorite childhood game but honestly I'm not holding my breath. I think Valve realizes they're probably going to make more money from their newest Overwatch-clone slop than they could ever make from fixing TF2.

And if they don't? They have the money. Steam will bail them out.

Jordan, 31, Houston TX

Personal Life/Career:

• What does he do? timestamp

  • 3 Jobs

  • Full time Software Engineer (Govt Agency)

    • $119'000

  • Computer Science Instructor at a Community College

    • $44 an hour

    • around 2'500 a month?

    • Year round classes

  • Computer Science Instructor at some company?

    • 10 weeks long, once a week, 4 and a half hours weekly

    • $95 an hour

    • Seasonal

• Career path timestamp

  • coding boot camp from 2021

  • Worked at Coinbase for 9 months but left in 2022 when they didn't convert contract to hire

    • 1 year unemployed - was also working at community colleges part time teaching prisoners to code?

  • Govt job started in January

• Suffers from 'anxiety' timestmap

  • Was an agoraphobe for a year 'could not leave [his] house'

    • Pre-coinbase

  • Caleb mentions that he also has this meme disease

Financials:

• Self Scored 1/10 timestamp

• Lifestyle Inflation timestamp

  • He has not heard of this term before

  • He flew in from Houston ($350 plane ticket)

    • Justification for flying timestamp

    • 280'000 Honda CRV probabaly wouldn't have made it there

• Thinks Food is his main spending timestamp

  • He is right and it's not even close

• Credit Card 1 (Bank of America) ($12'911) timestamp

  • $13'052 - $423 payments + $0 new purchases + $282 interest ==> $12'911 new balance

  • 785 credit available

  • 408 minimum due next month

  • Maxed out all his cards after losing coinbase job, decided to go traveling on credit

• Credit Card 2 (Chase Freedom) (2'082) timestamp

  • Almost entirely eating out

  • $2'486 - $2'486 payments + $2'060 new transactions + $22 interest ==> $2'082

  • Some credit cards he pays off every month - he doesn't pay off the Discover and BoA

• Credit Card 3 (Discover) ($1'576) timestamp

  • 301 interest accrued

  • no new transactions

  • Does he budget? timestamp

    • No

    • He used to but said "frick it"

• Credit Card 4 (Discover) (10'647) timestamp

  • $13'346 - $3'000 payments + $3000 interest ==> $10'647

  • $322 minimum payment

  • A few apple bills

• Credit Card 5 (American Express Blue) ($932) timestamp

  • $40 minimum payment

  • mostly grocery stores

  • Paying for hinge premium and not actually using the app

  • Caleb seething over his own dating failures

• Credit Card 6 (Krogers)

  • This one's paid off and irrelevant

• Loan from Parents ($6'000) timestamp

  • Parents do not know just how much he is spending

  • While he was unemployed, hasn't paid anything back to them

• Loan from Friend ($4'000) timestamp

  • This was money he used for Europe trip/world cup stuff?

• $260 on Google Ads timestamp

  • Monthly

  • His ex-gf left him for another man

  • LONG story about his ex's friend's mom owning a pharmacy, going to jail for fraud, the ex paid millions for a pharmacy he thinks is worth a hudnred thousand?

  • She's in debt for 3 million???????

  • he decides to make her a website and pay for her google ads

  • "my friend's like don't be a simp blah blah blah"

  • "She refuses to talk to me" :marseywtf;

  • They were on and off for ten years

• $1400 a month strip club habit tiemstamp

  • March or April of this year

  • went to a strip club in the middle of the day and fricked a stripper at the club?

    • Later explains that this was $700 timestamp

• Buys stuff for the jail students when he hits the grocery store timestamp

• Caleb gets into the online dating blackpill timestamp

  • Manlets btfo

  • This worm is 6 foot 4

• Federal Student Loans ($52'939) timestamp

  • No money currently owed

  • Govt Agency he works for might pay all of this if he sticks around for 3 years?

• State of Texas loan ($13'000) timestamp

  • Lots of late payments

  • He had initially thought that the federal deferrment applied to state loans

  • $208 minimum payment

• Private Loans ($31'146) timestmap

  • Bachelor's in Biochem and "Biophysical sciences"

  • "I was a bad student and I was lost I didn't know what the frick I wanted to do so I ended up staying in school for like 6 years"

  • Had to get private loans because he was on academic probation

  • interned at some labs and didn't like the biomed researcher thing

  • $376 minimum payment

  • 5.54% interest rate

  • refinanced form an initial 10% sally may loan

• About to a have a $10'000 operation timestamp

  • Cosmetic surgery

  • Hair transplant

  • In-depth discussion of balding prevention

  • Worm does not want to

  • How is he going to pay for this? timestamp

    • "So I just got approved for an American Express card"

  • "I know it doesn't make sense but I'm gonna do it anyways"

  • things in the pipepline to help him timestamp

    • Another teaching job at some higher end uni (110 an hour)

  • Cosmetic surgery is next week

  • 

Spending numbers tiemstamp

• Weird $1700 zelle/1400 atm withdrawal

  • doesn't know what these were

• Show ends early because there's no point in a budget

This is the third part of a series where I look at what the situation was for each faction in the Lebanese Civil War every 5 years. It's not meant to cover all the important events of the war, but just to show you how much the fortunes of a person or group could change in so little time.

Part 1: Syria

Part 2: Christian Militias

It was much harder to write about the Shi'a militias as they remain somewhat mysterious. There is abundant sources in English for all the minutiae of what the Christians were up to, but most people who write in English don't know or don't care about the Shi'a. It's even more difficult since Hezbollah was so good at keeping secrets. We still don't know for sure how they were organized, who was really leading them, or how they made decisions. I've also had to greatly simplify some things that were just too complicated to explain, like how the Shi'a and Palestinians interacted. Finding photos was even harder than the research, partly because search engines suck so much these days. I had to translate my search terms into Arabic just to find anything that didn't have a Getty Images watermark.

I repeat my cavaet before that this is about Shi'a organizations, not all Shi'a people. Many of them joined other groups of all kinds: the Lebanese army, Fatah, the SSNP, the Communist Party, the South Lebanon Army. Most had nothing to do with the militias at all.

1975

While the Palestinians and Maronites were training for the impending war, the Shi'a were much less militant. They lived mostly in the Bekaa valley and the south, far from the struggles going on in Beirut. Politics was left to the feudal landowners who dominated rural society. In 1975 their political awakening was just beginning. The charismatic Iranian-born Imam Musa al-Sadr had founded a movement to demand better treatment for the poor who never benefited from all the wealth passing through Beirut. As war broke out he formed his own militia, Amal. Sadr wanted change in Lebanon, but he was not a radical like the leftist Druze leader Kamal Joumblatt. During the intense fighting of 1975-1976 Amal did some fighting against the Lebanese Forces but Sadr kept them out of the action for the most part.

Children in Akkar on their way to fill up water from a well, July 1967. source

Sadr was unique among the faction leaders. Unlike the Maronite and Palestinian warlords he didn't shake down the population in his area for protection money. He sponsored the construction of schools and hospitals in the deprived regions of the country. He was widely respected outside of his own sect as a man who truly wanted to ease the burden of all the oppressed in Lebanon, no matter their sect. Somehow he managed to maintain close relationships with both the Iranian exiles plotting to overthrow the Shah and the Shah's secret police. Iran, flush with cash from booming oil prices, sent money to help Sadr in his charitable works. If there was one person in Lebanon who had the political and military power, the foreign contacts, and the temperament to bring the warring factions together and make peace, it was Musa al-Sadr.

Musa al-Sadr hanging out with his bros, the oppressed peoples of Lebanon.

1980

By 1980 Sadr was dead. On a trip to ask Arab leaders for help during Israel's raid in 1978 he arrived in Libya and was never heard from again, undoubtedly killed by Ghaddafi. His successors Hussein el-Husseini (yes, that's his real name) and Nabih Berri were shrewd but did not have the gravitas of Sadr.

In America they anglicized their name to Berry. I think raspberries are my favorite. They're so easy to grow.

The south was in crisis. Palestinian guerillas from a dozen different factions roamed freely with heavy weapons, oppressing the Shi'a population worse than the government ever had. Their terrorist raids into Israel provoked the Israelis to bomb and shell the border areas. In 1978 a major IDF raid swept over the border area, displacing around 200,000 people. They had nowhere to go except the slums sprouting up in the south of Beirut. Amal was building up its militia but it was in no shape to take on the Palestinians.

Kataeb militia in the the Maronite village Klea on the border. There was a large Christian minority in the south living in scattered villages. They fought for both sides in large numbers.

Meanwhile huge events were happening in Iran. The Shah was overthrown and replaced by Khomeini's revolutionaries, many of whom had been associates of Musa al-Sadr. The new regime kept sending aid to Amal, but some cracks were developing in Shi'a solidarity. Many members of Amal were inspired by the Iranian Revolution and wanted to emulate it. Amal's leaders were not so hot-headed and understood that they could no more build a Shi'a theocracy in Lebanon than they could on the moon. Nabih Berri came from an entirely different world from these rural fanatics. He was well versed in modern society, even working for General Motors in Dearborn for a time. This disconnect between the secular side of Amal and the devout revolutionary side would only deepen over time.

Ayatollah Khomeini having a nice little chortle. He actually smiled but there was some kind of unwritten rule among Western journos that you could only ever show pictures of him scowling.

1985

The cracks emerging in Amal had burst open by 1985. The fanatical elements of Amal had broken away to form Hezbollah. Some Shi'a who had been fighting for Palestinian groups also joined. While Amal's patron was Syria, Hezbollah was armed and trained by Syria's ally Iran. It was an awkward situation as the two rival groups in Lebanon were supposed to get along with each other like their patrons did. Hezbollah during this period was notorious around the world for their suicide bombings. Other groups used suicide bombers, even Christian ones (the SSNP), but Hezbollah stunned the world with devastating attacks against the US Marines and French, the US Embassy, another US Embassy building, and the Israeli headquarters in Tyre. They also began taking hostages, any Westerner they could no matter how innocent they were. Syria was not pleased as it did not want to bring down the wrath of America, especially when these terrorist attacks served more to serve Iran's interests than bring victory in Lebanon.

Survivors search the ruins of the US Marine barracks where 241 men were killed by a single suicide bomber.

The Israeli invasion of 1982 was not immediately opposed by the Shi'a of the south. Some even welcomed them as liberators come to drive out the Palestinians who had been tormenting them. But instead of cultivating them as potential allies, the Israelis treated them like a conquered enemy. Tensions rose, the Israelis began assassinating local imams, and a guerilla war soon broke out with both Hezbollah and Amal fighting the occupation forces. By 1985 the Israelis were in the process of withdrawing to their "security zone", a strip of land along the border, but the war would continue.

The most important event for the Arab world in 1982: Algeria beat West Germany at the World Cup!

Amal was now the largest militia in the nation. The invasion had driven even more refugees into Beirut and, desperate for money, they were easy to recruit. Several small militias had disbanded during the Israeli occupation and now many of the survivors joined Amal. The rapid expansion of the militia made it one of the most powerful forces in Lebanon but also lead to discipline problems as men from different backgrounds with different motives were hired. Weapons and ammunition flowed in from Syria, including a lot of artillery.

When Syria made an effort to bring together all the sects to make peace in 1985 (the "Tripartite Pact"), he brought in Amal, the Druze, and the Lebanese Forces. By now the militia was not just recognized as representing the Shi'a, but as one of the most powerful factions in the nation.

A mother tries to get her children to safety as the Syrians and their allies attack the Shatila refugee camp yet again. This massacre never caught the attention of Western media because it happened bit by bit over years.

Amal had always been friendly with Assad's regime but now it had practically become an extension of it. Berri was forced to do Syria's dirty work, joining with other Syrian-dominated groups to besiege the remaining Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut (the "War of the Camps". Fighting continued on and off for years as Assad was determined to not let Fatah ever use the camps as bases again.

Civilians evacuate Shatila with the help of the Red Cross, 1987.

Despite its relationship with Syria, Amal also tried to get along with Western powers. Hezbollah's kidnappings put them in a difficult position. Amal's failure to rescue them could be interpreted as either protecting Hezbollah or, even worse for their image, that they were not really in control of the chaos in West Beirut. They used the US as a conduit to indirectly negotiate with the Israelis and try to reduce the level of violence in south Lebanon where both Amal and Hezbollah were carrying out guerilla attacks on the Israeli troops remaining in the border zone.

Terry Waite on his way to negotiate with Hezbollah for the release of the hostages. They took him hostage too. He spent 4 years in solitary.

1990

Amal was now no longer a top-tier military power on the same level as Hezbollah and the Lebanese Forces. They had suffered badly in clashes with the Druze in West Beirut ("The War of the Flag") followed by the inevitable clash with Hezbollah, the "War of Brothers". Their militia was large but bloated with troops who were inexperienced and poorly motivated. They were no match for Hezbollah's troops, who were trained intensively by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards at bases in the Bekaa Valley. The war lasted on and off into 1990 with countless temporary cease-fires. Amal put up a good fight in the beginning but Hezbollah gradually gained the upper hand. By the end of the struggle, Amal was in terrible shape. Iran could afford to pay its proxy troops far more than impoverished Syria, so many Amal fighters defected to Hezbollah. In both of these wars, Amal had to be rescued by Syrian military intervention, making them even more dependent.

Amal militiamen, 1980s. source

While Amal's military power was cut down drastically by these defeats, it remained an important player in politics. Hezbollah was hampered by its mission to spread the Iranian Revolution. Most Shi'a were not interested in Ayatollah Khomeini's strange new form of Islam. His vision may have appealed to many rural Iranians but it was less compelling to Arabs who had lived side by side with other religions for countless generations. The idea of establishing a theocratic state where 2/3 of the population weren't even in the same sect was ludicrous, and even if it had been possible most Shi'a would not have wanted it. Hezbollah won on the battlefield but still lost the vote.

Iran banned these bloody rituals done on Ashura. Hezbollah followed their lead and stopped but many Shi'a Lebanese did not.

Hezbollah's military power and the skill of Amal's envoys gave the Shi'a an important seat at Taif where the final settlement of the war was negotiated. At first glance, the agreement doesn't seem to do much for the Shi'a, but there was one important change. Power was shifted from the president to the cabinet, which needed a quorum of 2/3 of its members to do business. In practice, about 1/3 of the cabinet will represent Shi'a parties, so if they have a few allies they can effectively veto anything that the government wants to do by just not showing up.

If you google "amal" you get pages and pages of Amal Clooney. But she's kind of r-slurred so I decided to post Salma Hayek instead.

Hezbollah had a unique position after the peace agreement. Their war wasn't over yet. They still had to drive out the Israelis. While all the other militias were disarmed, Hezbollah was allowed to keep their weapons.

Epilogue

Amal and Hezbollah mended their differences and as the "Shiite Duo" they now cooperate closely. Hezbollah does the bulk of the fighting while Nabih Berri of Amal, a master at patronage and manipulation, handles the parliament. By not attending cabinet meetings they are able to block the government from doing anything they disapprove of. Unfortunately this means nothing ever gets done. The government is completely paralyzed and unable to deal with the many crises that have hit the country in recent years.

Hezbollah troops celebrating on the day of Israel's evacuation.

Hezbollah did in fact use its weapons to great effect over the next 10 years. In the late 1990s Iran began supplying them with antitank missiles. At the same time, Hezbollah managed to thoroughly infiltrate the SLA (Israel's puppet army on the border) and kill or capture key leaders. The Israelis were reduced to cowering in their bunkers. In 2000 the decision was finally made to pull the plug. Without even waiting for the day they had planned to leave, the IDF abruptly abandoned their positions and headed home. Hezbollah had won. The purpose for which it was created had been fulfilled. This would have been a great time for them to lay down their guns or integrate themselves into the national army. But of course nobody puts their guns down when they're on a winning streak. Hezbollah now has come full circle, shooting across the border into Israel and triggering devastating retaliation just like the Palestinians had when they ruled the south.

Miles, 25, Lake Mary, FL

Personal Life/Career:

• IT Consultant

  • Contractor, roughly $65'000 after taxes tiemstamp

    • 65 last year, likely 62 this year

    • $28/hr

    • Thinks he's a little low-balled should be getting $35 an hour

    • Since January with this current place? Lost his old job timestmap

      • Had "some issues" with a (female) VP/Director at Mitsubishi Power (not the car company)

      • "She's kind of... an issue"

      • Had old job for 2 years

    • He definitely reports all his income for realsies timestamp

  • More old job deets

    • Coworker in that same month "got in [his] face, cussed [him] out" (circa November 2023) timestamp

      • Claims coworker was trying to break a security privacy law related to moving data between different countries

• Has a fiance and a 9 month old

  • She's a stay at home mom at the moment, no income

• relationship with parents timestamp

  • "it's a little toxic"

• Are you really hard-headed? timestamp

Financials:

• "So basically uh, what all kind of happened is I never really took my finances too seriously" timestamp

  • Major story time about family backstory?

  • Was renting from his parents in central Orlando for $500 a month?

  • Had an argument with the parents about them coming over unannounced?

    • "We'll keep coming by whenever we want if you have a problem with it be out by [date]"

    • "They kept coming by and harassing"

    • They took the TV that they had given to his sister (sister was living with him?) - took the tv while he was watching UFC

      • Parents also took all their other stuff?

  • The actual point timestamp

    • got forced to move?

    • they gave him eviction papers, stuck on doors and windows "might not have been real eviction papers"

    • Had to move by November 2023

  • Moving meant he needed a new motorcycle because he had to sell his jeep timestamp

    • Gas was "$100 a week"

    • Parents bought the Jeep for him when he was 18 (13'500 for it)

      • Used the money on the motorcycle and the move

• Self-score 6/10 timestamp

  • He has a "good amount of money saved up" and I can afford rent/food, about a third of savings will be going to taxes

• "My fiance says I have a shit-eating grin" timestamp

• Credit Card 1 ($1129/$1200) timestamp

  • $37 Late fee

  • Paid $45 to it

  • No new purchases

  • $73 due next month

  • Second late fee

  • Why isn't he paying his bills? timestamp

    • He wants to make sure that he still has money set aside???????

    • He tries to justify that he wants to have money if something happens?

    • Because it's like then I'm not gonna have it?

    • "It's hard for me to see the benefit"

• Credit Card 2 (Amazon) (5'145/5'000) timestmap

  • $373 minimum payment

    • includes $39 Late Fee

  • $116 in interest charged

  • Originally just a groceries card for Whole Foods

  • Fiance had to go take care of her grandparent, spent a couple months there?

    • Story time

    • Adjusted to 6 months, he gets pressed timestamp

      • Goes into a story about cash advances

      • He didn't know how cash advance interest works

      • He was doing twice a month cash advances for weed? $300 to $500 a month on weed timestamp

        • Claims he is not doing this any more

        • Tries to adjust the weed number down to $300 timestamp

    • "Are you trying to piss me off?" "A little bit" timestam

      • 

      • He says he's seen the show "plenty of times"

  • Has never budgeted

  • Got some advice to invest in Ali Baba, $3'000 timestamp

    • From a buddy who does day trading

    • Went from 3'000 to 300

  • Pressed on another missing payment timestamp

    • He paid it a week late

  • $15 in purchases, he didn't realize he'd bought anything this month

    • Some amazon order

  • Awkward shifting after caleb "jokes" about butchering the guest timestamp

  • He didn't know that minimum payments would increase if he got late fees

• Does not have a retirement account

• Florida Career College timestamp

  • Owes them $2373

  • "Third attempt notice'

  • Apparently they never gave him the degree?

  • He didn't go to the graduation to get physical the cert? He thought that he would need the literal physical cert

  • He's so stubborn he decided that he just wasn't going to pay because they weren't giving him the cert because he didn't go to the graduation

  • He was hoping Biden would get rid of them timestamp

    • He didn't know that Biden wouldn't have forgiven private loans

• Federal Student Loan

  • 5'496

  • Not making payments right now? He's just not paying

• $939 Phone timestamp

  • 0%

  • $125 phone bill

• Caleb reminisces about what his own butt looked like when he wasn't as fat timestamp

• They call his parents on speaker to get their side of things, editor is there to translate Spanish timestamp

  • Parents sound like they did literally nothing wrong and should take more of his stuff

• Affirm timestamp

  • "I like Affirm though"

  • Justification for TV "How am I gonna watch UFC?"

    • "I like to have the boys over"

  • What are the interest rates? timestamp

    • Thinks of them are between 25% and 30%

  • The actual interest rates timestamp

    • 36% $500 on one?

    • $600 TV at 30%

      • TV is "not even that good" $400 that he paid $600 for

    • 36%

  • So how does it make sense? timestamp

• Car (2005 PT Cruiser)

  • Got for his fiance

• Motorcycle (no debt?)

• Checking Account $363 timestamp

  • Disney+ (kid likes Bluey?), Spotify,

  • Went to see Nascar?

  • $63 at a dispensary

  • Overdraft timestamp

    • He knew it was going to happen?

  • Fair bit of eating out

• High Yield Savings (5'000) timestam

  • He thinks it's close to 6'000 (it's almost 5'000 flat)

  • He's paying his taxes quarterly? Thinks he'll end up with 9'000 after his quarterly

  • Thinks he's saving $1'700 a month

  • Gets pressed on whether his savings math is right

Pie Chart - timestamp

• 1'470 rent

• Does not pay utilities - fiance's cousin sleeps on couch, he pays utilities

• $70 for Internet (no Fiber)

• $230 car insurance

• On govt insurance? timestamp

  • Question about whether this hits him on taxes?

• $55 Gym

• $125 jujitsu gym

Planning to go on a cruise with fiance this August timestamp

• He hasn't bought in yet

"We actually had to stop you from smoking before you came on" timestamp

Mentions that he owns some land in Honduras in the epilogue

Chances are if you are using a device in 2024 you have likely touched a Unix systems: your phone, your appliances, and web serves are all using UNIX or UNIX likes. Created in the mid 70s at Bell labs, primarily by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, Unix was a multi user multi tasking operating system built for mainframe computers. It was built on a philosophy of simplicity where a set of small programs which each did one thing well would be able to communicate together to accomplish more complex tasks.

It was originally built just for software development but became more popular as it was licensed out to various universities, governments, and corporations (due to AT&Ts relationship with bell labs they could not sell UNIX directly but had to license it to other parties). Most famously was BSD by Berkley which lives on as the BSD line of OSes. One of these licenses was sold to Microsoft who then created Xenix, which was then sub licensed to other parties making it briefly the most popular UNIX version until it was oudated with UNIX 4 and 5 by AT&T and Sun.

At the same time Microsoft had made a deal to provide a lighter OS for IBM's line of personal computers since they were to under powered for Unix so they hired Tim Paterson who had created 86-DOS for Seattle Computer Products Intel Machines to port the DOS system to IBM PCs, IBM PC DOS, and bought the DOS rights from him creating MS-DOS. An under powered 16 bit single tasking piece of shit. Microsoft positioned DOS as the companion to XENIX with the two being compatible and hoped to eventually make DOS identical to single user XENIX called XEDOS. Until Bell labs broke up and AT&T could just start straight up selling UNIX V which blew XENIX out of the water.

With DOS being so shit MS began working with IBM on a new OS called O/S 2 to replace DOS. Eventually the culture clash got to be too much and the success of the DOS based Windows 3 convinced to continue with DOS while IBM kept OS/2. As powerful multi processing OSs which could multi task effectively became common competitors like Sun UNIX line, OS2, OpenVMS, and Next Step offered better multi processing more power and backwards DOS support.

In this soup is where the Unix Haters mailing list emerged. It ran from around 1988 to 1993 and was a place for people to rant about UNIX. This was collected in the 1994 book The UNIX-HATERS Handbook. I think the motive of the Unix Haters becomes clear when you look at who wrote the intro for the book, Don Norman, a user experience engineer at Apple. The Unix Haters view Unix as a inhuman, inaccessible dinosaur which is used not because it is intuitive or user friendly but because it was first and now its everywhere. The book is mostly a polemic of rants about bad experiences and vivid metaphors:

Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gauge, nor any of the other numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the driver makes a mistake, a giant “?” lights up in the center of the dashboard. “The experienced driver,” says Thompson, “will usually know what's wrong.”

In a previous job selling Lisp Machines, I was often asked about Unix. If the audience was not mixed gender, I would sometimes compare Unix to herpes—lots of people have it, nobody wants it, they got screwed when they got it, and if they could, they would get rid of it. There would be smiles, heads would nod, and that would usually end the discussion about Unix.

I have a natural revulsion to any operating system that shows so little planning as to have to named all of its commands after digestive noises (awk, grep, fsck, nroff).

If the designers of X Windows built cars, there would be no fewer than five steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which followed the same principles—but you'd be able to shift gears with your car stereo. Useful feature, that.

Q. Where did the names “C” and “C++” come from?

A. They were grades.

In between these metaphors are the same few points made over and over again: 1. Unix commands do not follow logical names for instance grep searches files, awk is a text replacement as is sed, cat concatenates files and/or displays constants to the command line, fsck checks file systems ect. This is a mostly pedantic argument since any experienced Unix user knows these by heart its also pointless in the internet age and only really applies to first time non programmers. 2. Pipes are too limited and difficult to use as they only go one way and transfer text as is the bash shell since allows for custom programs with unique syntax. The authors compare this to Macintosh which has independent programs with their own discreet files:

When was the last time your Unix workstation was as useful as a Macintosh? When was the last time it ran programs from different companies (or even different divisions of the same company) that could really communicate? If it's done so at all, it's because some Mac software vendor sweated blood porting its programs to Unix, and tried to make Unix look more like the Mac.

The fundamental difference between Unix and the Macintosh operating system is that Unix was designed to please programmers, whereas the Macwas designed to please users.

Unix was literally made for programmers and working Ill say in my own work bash scripting a nice quick and dirty automation tool.

3. RM is a powerful command which does not warn the user of its dangers as using it you can easily destroy a whole system if you make a type while far up the root:

I too have had a similar disaster using rm. Once I was removing a file system from my disk which was something like /usr/foo/bin. I was in /usr/foo and had removed several parts of the system by:

% rm -r ./etc

% rm -r ./adm

…and so on. But when it came time to do ./bin, I missed the period. System didn't like that too much.

Unix wasn't designed to live after the mortal blow of losing its /bin directory. An intelligent operating system would have given the user a chance to recover (or at least confirm whether he really wanted to render the operating system inoperable).

To this I say skill issue plain and simple. Reminds me of a student in another lab whose PI has a strict "no rm" rule for students working on the supercomputer .

4. Bad documentation. This mostly came from the At&T commericalization. Pretty much no company wants documentation out there for their commercial OS otherwise you can easily leave the plantation I mean can anyone show me the windows NT 10 kernel documentation?

Beyond that many complaints here are outdated. Whining about usenet speeds? Whining about C++ being as inefficient as COBOL? Whining about x windows being too slow? Whining about Sendmail? Even worse a few years after this book the 1991 Unix like kernal Linux by Linus Torvalds would start to gain massive popularity outliving Unix itself. Eventually Linux would get desktop enviroments which would have options like a trash can for restoring data and Mac like programs while offering a unix like command line system.

The Unix haters hand book is at the end of the day a relic of its time a time when raw At&T commercial UNIX was still a major player and before the GNU/Linux FOSS revolution really took off while some of their complaints remain unaddressed many did and many others just come off as the rantings of fresh faced college noobs or normies who are angry their high end academic programming rig isnt built for r-slurs like 1993 Macintosh (the time when Apple was doing so well they nearly went bankrupt and had to but Next Step in 1996 so Steve Jobs could raid them and replace Mac OS with a good OS like NextStep/OSX).

Still the Unix haters aren't done yet for I haven't mentioned the one true Unix hater. Where we left off in history Microsoft needed a proper 32 bit OS with great multi tasking support so they did what they did best and just stole quality by poaching Dave Cutler from Digital Equipment Corporation who had just made the 32 bit operating system openVMS to make Windows NT.

So Windows NT 3.1 launched a year after DOS 3.1 looking mostly the same but running a heck of a lot nicer since its proper 32 bit with a new NTFS file system and not a 16 bit piece of shit doing programming frickery

When the magic of the windows 9x series happened, remember MS was wringing over 5 years out of a really shitty OS they bought in 1980 when the competition ran so much bettter, NT entered version 4.0 before becoming windows 2000.

After the disaster that was Windows ME on DOS, DOS was fully phased out for the NT kernal with Windows vista and has maintained its status was the Windows kernal up till Windows NT Kernal 10.0 which powers windows 10 and 11.

What does this have to do with Unix Haters? Well Dave Cutler is the ultimate UNIX hater!!

Ballmer reassured him. The bright side was finally --finally-- NT had a large target market. Some portion of Windows owners would adopt NT. This put Cutler in a much better position to define the next generation of PC software, placing him at the apex of technical power in the computer industry. Besides, NT would still meet the goals closest to Cutler's heart: portability, reliability and the ability to provide an alternative to Unix, the splintered high-end operating program.

This last goal was crucial to Cutler. "Unix is like Cutler's lifelong foe," said one team member who'd worked with Cutler for nearly two decades. "It's like his Moriarty [Sherlock Holmes's nemesis]. He thinks Unix is a junk operating program designed by a committee of Ph.D.s. There's never been one mind behind the whole thing, and it shows. So he's always been out to get Unix. But this is the first time he's had the chance."

• according to the book Show-stopper! : the breakneck race to create Windows NT and the next generation at Microsoft which has never been confirmed by Cutler himself

Still its fun to imagine Cutler slaving away in the Azure and Xbox dungeons content knowing he has stopped the year of the linux Unix desktop ... forever.

Or until Windows 13 ships with the linux kernal running KDE plasma skinned to look like Windows 7 and windows software under compatibility layers.

Or maybe Microsoft, Google, and IBM's funding of GNOME will pay off and once KDE and XFCE are killed linux users will be forced to choose between the ugliest barf tier anti productivity desktop ever or run back into the loving arms of whatever OSX/KDE adware hybrid UI Windows 13 is running.

!codecels MAJOR OS DRAMA !cuteandvalid New effort post !zoomers look old OSs all zoomers love neurodivergent old OSs its why we invent slop like haikuOS

!jannies this is an effortpost I just couldnt mark it cause the effortpost tick box doesnt work with drafting and I have so many images I need to draft or furryfox crashes

Bitching about how Jeff Bozos have been raping the defiled corpse of Robert Jordan Part number #174627254632 - GIRLBOSS EDITION

GIRLBOSS FOID POWER FANTASY COMPLAINTS:

Greetings you scags, scrotes and hags Many of you guys having made even a passing attempt to glans at the recent culture war of the past 5 years, would have heard about the GIRLBOSS meme, within and around chuds and avid anti-woke critics of recent media, especially movies and TV-series regarding popular franchises from giant companies like Disney

The Big complaints is essentially that woman characters have been trite because they are overpowered female-power-fantasies or mary sues or that the plots revolving them have become inferior as the directors/authors bend the in-universe rules and logic to make the primary female protagonist look great or whatever

Usually, and especially this is accompanied with the simultaneous corruption and Demasculation of the male cast, for the reason of (according to chuds) the enfranchisement of minorities for the purposes of wokeness.

Many examples of this phenomena are especially present in Disney movies. The Starshit Wars movies have the empowerment of the new Sequal Trilogy's prime starlet protagonist Rey (at least according to Chuds) be overwhelmingly competent to such extreme degree, that it erases tension, as the character is seldom in danger or faces actual adversity in their adventure - with the crowning bite of this concept in that the most prominent male protagonists, the pop-culture famous Luke and Solo seeming like deadbeat losers in comparison.

Rey instantly accomplishes all avenues of expertise in their domains from the previous Original Trilogy Movies, such as being a superior pilot and technician than deadbeat dad Solo, and being braver and more powerful that the cuck alien-titty milkdrinker Luke. This pissed off the Starshit fanbois about 8 years ago and would rift fandoms

Other examples are the new Asoka and Obi One series, where the male stars are kitties and cucks, and even if they are the supposed primary protagonists of their name TV series they get upstaged by their female counterparts in every stage.

In non-Disney examples, there has been the Rangs of Power, which followed the misadventures of Galadriel in an era long before the 2000s LOTR trilogy. Here she has also been criticised by chuds who fear girls can be their equals and the series accused of de-masculating the male cast to absurdity and the bending of logic, for the sake of making the female star Galadriel appear more competent or praiseworthy or whatever

A recent series, which is the sequel of Willow 1988, has also been criticized by chuds for making the main titular character a backstage actor in his own named show, and instead following a pair of lesbians upstaging the cuck beta male dwarf main protagonist, who appears to be completely inept compared to his movie appearance 30 years prior.

The list of similar events catalogued by chuds relentlessly and neurodivergentally is long, but you guys get the general gist.

The aversion to modern female led action heroines being denoted with the unfavorable epithet GirlBoss, has even influenced the arguments regarding the recent financial failure of Furiosa, a movie in the Mad Max. There's been lots of arguments in /r/boxoffice with chuds gloating at its failure and non-chuds arguing that the failure has been due to a complex set of factors in the modern film industry post-COVID.

Chuds claim that the movie slop of recent Hollyweird didn't just create badly written modern Heroines, but had made the public wary of female action heroines being automatically presumed to be inferior in writing due to the association of lowbrow Grilboss writing power fantasies and bullshit. And that subconsciously the NORMIES has caught on to the quality of female power fantasy slop peddled the past half decade in Hollyweird, and have been less prone to relinquish their hard earned money for a movie they are on the fence about, especially in the current Recession r*ped global economy of today.

But strong and able female heroines have been a thing for decades? So why are they a problem now? The Angelina Joline Lara Croft: Tomb Raider movies from 2001 and 2003 was pretty much well liked, and was basically the gender-bended version of the James Bond spy thriller movies - where the very author Ian Fleming way back in 1953 explicitly stated he created the character of James Bond to be a male power trip, as his absurd and unbelievable adventures were imagined hyper exaggerated espionage in the British Intelligence legends.

Which brings us to the recent Wheel of Time series which has had its own fandom rift and culture war conflict over the course of the past two years with many book purist vs chuds vs wokies vs Show-only fans vs people like me inciting conflict deliberately

Wheel of time is unique and difficult to criticize in this regarding GirlBosses, because the Wheel of Time Books have since inception had very powerful and potent Heroines

Despite being a man, Robert Jordan had almost half of all the most important people be women in his 11 books written over 15 years ( he croaked before he could finish the darn things, but left extensive raw manuscripts) and Jordan had fully half of all perspective chapters of the protagonists be from woman characters! (a total 704 total chapters and over 4 million words!! )

So chuds b%tching about Wheel of Time having GirlBoss epidemic are full of shit, compared to their complains about Girlbosses in franchises like Rangs of Power and Disney Starshit, right? There in the source material are explicitly power, charismatic and commanding women whom are important and decisive to the plot of the story - so the TV series Wheel of Woke following powerful women characters is actually following the will of the author this time, and chuds are just bitching that they are getting turbo cucked by women,

because they have micropricks and can't handle any STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS right?

Well you guys see the problem is the presentation of the fortitude of the female protagonists of the Wheel of Time books in the TV series, and they are quite similar to Disney mary sue heroines and tacky female-power fantasy tier characters who always without exception upstage and outmatch their demastculatedd male peers.

Think of the recent Witcher TV series in which the main lore protagonist Gerald, gets progressively upstaged by Yennifer in the series, despite her being only a thematic foil and character mirror in the books.

REDDIT:

https://old.reddit.com/r/WoT/comments/16cj403/why_does_the_show_need_to_have_the_women_be/

"Why do the women have to be physically badass?" 59%

In the TV series many of the primary female heroines are physical karate and swordsmanship experts and beat up badguys with ease, similar to how the 50kg Black Widow manhandles 150kg bodybuilder badguys in the Marvel movies like they were paper-weights, instead of men 3 times more massive than fricking she is You can sometimes see the body-double doing the heavy legwork for the fricking actresses

In the Books, there 5 main starter characters are called by the fandom the "Emond's Field Five". They are 3 boys and 2 girls, who will gradually over the course of years in-universe transform from backwards, shy and timid country bumpkins, into powerful generals and leaders of international organizations, and lead full nation states into apocalyptic war. Their transformation from helpless fools into powerful warriors and witches capable of casting fricking napalm on armies or leading forces in battle with the tactical acumen of Caeser or Alexander the Great, is one of the appeal of the books.

For these girl characters to be so obviously skilled in martial arts, especially so early is just

In the books for example, the mage women are called Aes-Sedai, and usually are not skilled in martial combat, because they don't need to be, as again they can conjure up flamethrowers from thin air, so for them physical martial prowess is unneeded. There are Aes-Sedai whom have physical Martial prowess, but our 3 main female characters from the start of the books and series - Moiraine, Egwene and Nynaeve were all just regular women/girls whom were relatively defenseless without their magic powers.

In fact in the books, all of the Aes-Sedai mage women have Warders - men who are like Aragorn from LOTR rangers, whom are the greatest swordfighters on the continent, whom are basically sworn to protect their mage women wards to death, and basically deal with physical threats, like any bandits whom had managed to slip through the Aes-Sedai Napalm-flamethrower spray into immediate close range for dagger striking distance. Lan is the Warder for the Aes-Sedai character Moiraine played by Rosamund Pike

Now characters like Nyneave was a turbo tomboy and a firebrand whom took no shit from anyone, but for example when she tried to sneak up on the warder Lan, as she was one of the quietest sneaks in her village, but got turbo humbled by Lan who's been doing this for decades!

These 3 primary female heroines would develop from brats and country bumpkins to striking and charismatic heroines over time, and their power in magic did not need physical badassery in shit like swordfighting to showcase their mettle.

What's even worse is that there exists a faction of desert dwelling gingers, called the Aiel, whom are basically an entire ethnic group made out of Conan the Barbarian type motherlovers, whom are so extremely warlike that they are in-universe worth as much as ten non-Aiel forces, where regularly small groups of Aiel completely cuck and r*pe the rest of the continents armies by a factor of ten to one.

The Aiel are foreshadowed and talked about with such dread by the characters in books, that their final reveal is spectacular when they finally meet in the big-butt desert in which the warlike Aiel reside.

The Aiel are physically so so strong and powerful that they outclass all other armies on the continent, when the 5 main protagonists of the books, the Emond's Field Five, finally meet they are shocked and intimidated by the very tall and powerfully muscular Aiel. Think of meeting the Spartans from Zack Snyder's 300.

The most striking part of the Aiel is that like the soviet union, pretty much ALL of their women are warriors as well, entire tribes from teenagers up are raised like mongolian hordes to be part of the main manpower. While there are warrior women in the rest of the Wheel of Time lands, they are the exception, and men form the bulk of armies.

Our main characters are basically shocked at seeing these Amazonian warrior women who turbo cuck all the other factions in-universe. Not in the TV series though they are all already physically badasssssssss

"I mean, I think that's their point? They're saying you don't need to make every female character a badass with a blade out of nowhere for the purpose of female empowerment, as there are already plenty of women in the series for whom it makes sense that they are badasses at weapon-based combat"

"Is female empowerment the only possible explanation for a female character using a female character using a blade? In the books it was extremely common for characters to have a belt knife on them. Moiraine was being attacked and she used the only weapon she had available to defend herself. That doesn't make her a badass with a blade."

"Maybe and here me out, maybe if they didn't remove her powers for no reason what so ever her character wouldn't need to fight in a way that she never does in the books."

So basically to make you guys understand the issue, the soywoke writers literally could not help themselves into making the primary female protagonists turbo badass in terms of physical martial prowess, they just NEEEEEDED her to show badass swordsmanship in martial combat, not her warder Lan, whose job it is to do so in the books, because men ae cucks and demasculated wimps, and women don't need no man!

The issue here is that the strong women in the books, were literally STILL not strong enough for the writers and directors, and they just had to include generic modern Hollyweird GirlBoss all rounded independence and mary sue like qualities, where the women needed no aid from their cuck male peers, and so on

And just like the diversity issue i bitched about months ago, this physical badassery undercuts themes later explored in the books, where this TV show version of Moraine would be completely unimpressed with the Amazonian Aiel women, if she is already such an absurd badass with a sword!

Additionally in the books the Aiel are supremely arrogant and culturally chauvinistic, they hold open contempt for al other cultures and armies and warriors - and our protagonists would end up humbling Aiel in various ways, by demonstrating that inner strength of character, wits and tactical army leadership can overcome physically dominating foes

Instead as is typical with modern Hollyweird, NOPE, the girls are just experts and badasses with weapons from the very start, can't show Hollyweird chicks ever be less in any domain than their kitty wimp male peers

"It doesn't really change the point. It makes fades look like they are on par with your average street thug wanting to mug her. In that scenario I could see her wounding one and getting away. Fades are supposed to be a little more dangerous than some random street criminal wanting a coin."

Again this mary sue bullshit even undercuts tension from the GirlBoss moment itself, just to show how totally cool grils are. In the books Fades are super scary shit Even just one of them takes absolutely tremendous amount of skill and efforts to kill and dispatch. These things can move through walls, and stab you in the fricking back while you are holding a siege in one direction. Normal people piss themselves when even ONE of these things enter combat

and here our grilboss dispatched 3 of the fricking things like common generic badguysz from marvelslop

And you will get constant from the soywokes who will deny the powerscaling and tension breakers from lore to screen adaptation, or that the female protagonists are never ever portrayed as anything but underdogs

"Well- Lan is clearly held as the best swordsman in the series (books) and in ep 3 two fades literally toy with him. And yet moraine in the same fight (a whole foot taller than the book version) manages to hold her own against a fade with a dagger. WTF?"

"She holds her own? She gets a single stab in before the fade comes back after her. If Lan hadn't shown up, all she would have accomplished was delaying her torture and death by a few seconds."

"Why does she know any sword fighting?"

Lol the sarcasm against this wokesoy who refuses to adknowledge that having fricking expertise martial prowess with a bladed weapon is out of character for moraine.

"Ahh, sword play, the classic trope that signifies anger and frustration. It would make since if it were a hobby of hers or a skill she had control over to show contrast of her lack of control with her powers. It comes off as "wow what a bad butt" and seems like they picked a random activity for her to do while expressing her unhappiness with her teacher."

"You've never seen people work out to deal with frustration? That's a new one for you?"

"Yeah, like how sometimes you're so frustrated that you go do parkour to let off steam? You don't just pick up a sword and go. That's how you lose an eye."

And once again the 3 main female protagonists were very able and brave and competent characters in the books, who overcame much adversity, but they never showed martial prowess better than their male peers - thus making any argumentation against these type of insincere soys impossible.

"I'm just wondering why people think hiding and stabbing a Fade as it kills you is considered "badass" or "OP". I thought it was perfect that Moiraine wasn't a helpless maiden without the Power. She's resourceful and calm under pressure. That's her character to a T."

"Right? It's a move that she makes because she has no options. She's not holding her own in a fair fight or doing Jedi backflips or anything."

"I think the issue is what they are being op in. Nynaeve, eqwene and Elayne should be op in the one power and politics, but they shouldn't be op in physical combat. It's just not their character's strong suit."

It's basically for the whole thread.

LAST THREAD: TRUTH NUKE!!!!11111

https://old.reddit.com/r/WoT/comments/168qf9b/the_show_is_a_female_power_fantasy/

"This adaption is permeated with female gaze and chauvinism. The way the reds are clear misandrists, the green act like creepy old perverts... We are frequently shown shirtless, muscular men in gratuitous scenes, but the rare moments of female nudity are always very tame and naturalistic, with zero titillation (constrast that with GOT's sexposition, the most classic example that Littlefinger's brothel scene)."

"Male characters are generally incompetent, flat or uninteresting, but even Liandrin, which was one of the most hated and one dimensional characters in the books, gets to shine."

i wonder what these people are doing here?! It's like they actively hate the books and Jordan's writing, which is fine, but then why the frick are they on the sub lol.

incel ajah, lmoa

https://old.reddit.com/r/WoT/comments/168qf9b/the_show_is_a_female_power_fantasy/jyxfqz9/?context=8

Whooo boi lots of downmarseys in this specific chain

"Male characters are generally incompetent, flat or uninteresting, but even Liandrin, which was one of the most hated and one dimensional characters in the books, gets to shine.

Its one thing for them to be perceived as such from the pov of the powerful female characters, but when you consistently show that to actually be true youve lost me.

What exactly is it subverting here? Can you think of any piece of media thats come out in the past 30 years showing a highly patriarchal, misogynistic society where the women actually are incompetent, submissive housewives that cant be trusted with anything of importance?"

"Women aren't very prevalent in LOTR for sure, but the few that do play major roles are powerful, wise and courageous."

"But Eowyn is one of the most badass characters in those books, Arwen gets her moment to shine in the first one against the Nazgul and Galadriel could be on par in strength and power with Sauron. Not to mention Galadriel is key in getting the elves in the fight and Frodo's quest. So I don't quite see how that is a good example of ‘incompetent, submissive housewives'."

Some more put into words what we feel about the girlboss shenanigans:

"I think the issue that most people seem to have with it is that those themes were already present in the books, but the show exaggerates them to the point where it borders on insulting"

"I can't stand the fake girlboss way this is handled. Nynaeve sparring with the warders was done so badly. She's clumsy af (the warders were not much better, though), and looks terrible. Don't write things the actors can't pull off. The book's message is different but equal. This issue is just one example where the show has lost the plot from the start. As a side note, Lan's fight with the nightrunners was pretty embarrassing too."

"She wasn't really portrayed at being competent vs the warders though." Your eyes are lying to you chud

"I don't mind them bigging up the women, but not when it comes at the expense of the men. You can barely even call Rand a main character, and Rosamund Pike is always going to be sucking up screen time even when Moiraine should be taking a step back. The boys are being let down by this adaptation."

"This is just inaccurate - Rand has the second-most screentime, the most active screentime, and the second-most lines, in Season 1. https://www.thegreatblight.com/post/wheel-of-timing-analysis-an-s1-breakdown. He's clearly a main character, and Moiraine's largely boosted in S1 by the need to have her explain nearly everything."

"It's what he does with that screen time that's the problem, especially when compared to Nynaeve."

"Well I would say if rand has that much time on screen and spoken lines and still feels to so many as a side character than that's an issue. It means that even though he was on screen for all that time and had all those lines in comparison to others he didn't actually do or say much with any substance"

And finally

"I just don't understand why the source material isn't good enough to stick to. Game of Thrones did it for the first 6 seasons and everybody loved it. Then when they ran out of source material and started making up their own stuff it went downhill."

Today I'll tackle the various Christian militias of the civil war. Many Christians fought for the "Muslim" side in various organizations like the Communist Party and SSNP, but here I'm just looking at the militias that openly identified themselves as fighting for sectarian reasons. Popular Christian figures who sought compromise with the Muslims were forced to flee the country to avoid assassination, so the gangsters leading the militias were the only ones who mattered in those years.

Organizations

Kataeb

These guys are often called the "Phalangists" in English because some journo a long time ago thought it would be cute or something. It was one of the first real political parties to win a large following, formed by Pierre Gemayel, a soccer player who had been in the 1936 Olympics. While some superficial inspiration came from European fascists, their real agenda was independence from France. They represented middle class Christians (especially Maronites) who wanted a Lebanese state dominated by Christians. The last genocide had happened in the 1860s and they had legitimate reasons to fear what might happen if they were swallowed up into Syria or a pan-Arab state where they would be vastly outnumbered by Muslims. In order to prevent this nightmare scenario, they were determined to keep the powers reserved for the Christians in Lebanon's unofficial constitution, the presidency and a majority in parliament. They saw this as the only guarantee against Arab nationalism.

Everyone called him "Sheikh Pierre". I expect the same treatment from you.

During the brief 1958 civil war, Kataeb was one of the main forces on the "right-wing" side against Nasserists. Just as this threat began to dissipate in the late 1960s, armed and militant Palestinians began pouring into the country and acting like they owned the place. This triggered the deep seated fears of many Christians of being swept up into some greater Arab community with no control over their own destiny. They began building up their own militia before the war, trying to train it to be a match for the Palestinians. They were by far the largest of the Christian parties.

US troops land at Beirut to deal with the crisis, 1958. It was resolved peacefully with the help of American troops and diplomats.

National Liberal Party

Like most "parties" in Lebanon this was not a real political party. It was more like a medieval lord leading his underlings. Camille Chamoun was a za'im, one of the wealthy landowners who held his part of the country under almost feudal conditions. He had been president in the 1950s so he had political connections throughout the nation. The NLP was mostly run by people who were in some way connected to Chamoun through his land holdings or political patronage. He had an especially large following among Christians to the south and east of Beirut. His party was second in importance to Kataeb among Christians.

This is some French singer called Camille. Imagine choosing to spell it the way girls do. At least call yourself Kamil or something.

Marada

Suleiman Franjieh was another za'im with his base in and around Zgharta in the north. Many inhabitants of the area had long been loyal to his family. Franjieh was president when the war broke out but much of his power still came from his ability to put men with guns out into the streets to enforce his will in his territory. When war broke out these men were organized into the Marada militia. He had very close personal ties to Hafez Assad, who had sheltered him when he was a fugitive in the 1950s.

Zgharta.

Minor Groups

Several smaller Christian militias were formed as war drew near, such as the Guardians of the Cedars. These groups were motivated by bloodlust and fanatical hatred of the Palestinians. While the larger militias often engaged in atrocities during the war, for the smaller groups that was the purpose of their existance. Each one could put only a few hundred men into the field but they were determined fighters, eager to get access to helpless people to torture and slaughter. With slogans like "It is a duty for each Lebanese to kill a Palestinian" it's no wonder that they were blamed for a wildly disproportionate share of war crimes.

Etienne Saqr, AKA Abu Arz (Father of the Cedars), leader of the Guardians of the Cedars.

1975

Pierre Gemayel put his son Bashir in command of Kataeb's militia and Chamoun put his son Dany in command of his. At the outbreak of war, the Christian militias formed an umbrella organization, the Lebanese Forces, to coordinate their actions. Their forces were not well trained but a large part of the army sympathized with them and supplied weapons, defended key locations, or even defected outright to join the LF. They were a powerful force, at least in the Maronite heartland between East Beirut and Tripoli.

An M113 APC carrying LF fighters. Both sides got some from army defectors and put them to good use. You'll often see guys riding on top of it outside of combat because it doesn't have air conditioning.

Two immediate objectives of the LF when fighting broke out were the hotels district and the Tal el-Zaatar refugee camp. The hotels were tall enough to give an excellent view down into Beirut. They happened to be near the dividing line between Christian East Beirut and the enemy's territory in West Beirut, so they rushed their troops in to secure them first. Tal el-Zaatar was on a hill overlooking East Beirut. Its position in the middle of Christian territory was a major threat to the LF but also an opportunity. The Palestinians had dug fortifications and a maze of tunnels beneath the camp, but they were vulnerable to a siege.

The LF at this point were opposed to Syria intervening in the war, fearing that they would impose some kind of left-wing Arab nationalist regime.

1980

By the end of 1980 Kataeb had destroyed or absorbed all the other members of the coalition. From this point on it and the Lebanese Forces are essentially the same thing. Gemayel first eliminated Marada by hitting Tony Franjieh in his own stronghold in the Ehden massacre. His right hand man Samir Geagea led the attack, famously killing his wife, daughter, maid, and dog in the process. Then he turned on the NLP, launching a surprise attack against his supposed allies, gunning down dozens in broad daylight in Beirut. Chamoun got out of the militia business after that.

This is a dog, perhaps similar to the one that was killed.

The LF had opposed Syrian intervention in 1975 and it did in 1980 as well, but only after coming full circle. Facing defeat at the hands of the Palestinian/leftist forces in 1976 they begged the Syrians to intervene and rescue them. It only took a couple years for them to start resenting their rescuers and their remaining presence in Lebanon and fighting broke out between them. Now in 1980 there was an uneasy calm as the LF held on to the Christian neighborhoods of Beirut. Kataeb had long been recieving semi-covert aid from Israel. By 1980 this was out in the open as the Israelis built up the LF's military capabilities, seeing it as a bulwark against both Syria and the Palestinians.

An upgraded M4 Sherman given to the LF by Israel. WW2 technology still performed well against poorly trained militia.

Some remnants of defected army units and the smaller militias in the south of the country ended up fighting for Israel. Their puppet South Lebanon Army would be a powerful force near the border until long after this war ended.

1985

By 1985 the situation has completely changed. Bashir was dead and the Israelis were pulling back to the border. As they left, the LF entered the mixed Christian/Druze Chouf region and ran into the Druze militia. They took turns massacring each others' villages. In the Christian heartland they were still completely dominant. They had a steady revenue stream from taxing goods coming through the ports under their control and a relatively sophisticated bureacracy to manage it. It was effectively its own little state.

The port of Jounieh. The LF controlled it and several other small ports on the coastline it controlled.

But by now the writing was on the wall. The Syrians were all over the place with no other foreign power to seriously oppose them. The little Christian ministate had no viable future with Syrian artillery in the hills above East Beirut, ready to fire any time they had a disagreement. The LF's leader Elie Hobeika entered negotiations with Syria to bring the LF over to their side. Meanwhile Samir Geagea was plotting a coup against him.

Elie Hobeika deep in thought plotting his next scheme, 1985.

1990

Now there was an entirely new threat. Fed up with years under the thumb of the LF's gangster "militia", a large part of the Christian population was rising up against him. Gen. Michel Aoun led parts of the Lebanese army in attacks against them. He called it the "War of Elimination", vowing to wipe out all the militias, ressurect the Lebanese state, and regain independence from foreign occupiers. The LF was on the defensive, unable to match the firepower of a real army, especially its artillery. But when ammunition supplies from Iraq were cut off and Syria given the green light for a full invasion by the US, Aoun's forces were quickly overrun.

Gen. Michel Aoun, when he was the only one left brave enough to fight against the Syrian occupation, 1990. In the mid-2000s he abruptly decided that they weren't so bad after all and became their main Christian ally in Lebanon.

Epilogue

The LF accepted the Taif Accords but did not fare well in the aftermath. Geagea was now its leader. In 1994 he was arrested for allegedly blowing up a church and 11 people in it. Whether or not he actually did it doesn't really matter. He had certainly murdered many people during the Civil War, especially his Christian rivals. Not that anyone was actually trying to get justice for an atrocity. The Syrians didn't trust him so they had their puppets in the Lebanese security forces pin the blame on him. He wasn't released until the Syrians were finally driven out.

Samir Geagea the elder statesman, who hopes we'll forget about Samir Geagea the hitman of the 1970s.

Today the LF is just a political party doing ordinary political things in parliament, with Geagea still its leader. It leads to some awkward situations. When Tony Franjieh's family was killed, his son Sulemein happened to be away. Now Hezbollah wants to make him president. Geagea has been adament in opposing him. Media outlets like AP and AFP will tell you this is because the politics of the current moment. Really? Maybe Geagea is just worried that the guy is gonna go full John Wick and get revenge for his dog if he's president.

Athena, 32

Carter, 25

Oklahoma

Personal Life/Career:

• 3 kids, she had 1 prior to the marriage with another man?

  • 3, 4, and 8

  • 8 year old lives with her father in Florida right now

• "Tensions are high" pre-filming timestamp

  • Immediate jump into maritial issue kino

  • She sees herself as saving the two of them financially and considering divorce if he doesn't get himself together

  • She's sober 9 years, very into AA, was in military

  • He was sober for a year, met when he was 2 weeks sober

  • "He's strictly a drug addict" timestamp

    • Is he off drugs?

      • He says "Yeah" she says "No" at the same time

      • Clarifies that he messes around with psychedelics, she clarifies wit story time about finding him "dead on the floor" four years ago timestamp

      • Mentions missed the birth of his third child because he'd smoked too much weed and had a stomach ache

        • Hard cut into caleb's grift shilling

    • Current drug use deets timestamp

      • Mostly Kratom, Weed - "Could be Jamba Juice for a week but nothing's gonna stop him"

      • Some psychedelics too?

    • How he relapsed 4 years ago timestamp

      • She bought a bottle of alcohol to help with an ear infection, someone else suggested this?

        • He chugged it and mixed some opiates

    • She does "hape"

      • "unprocessed tobacco, ash, and different plants from the Amazon Jungle"

      • Both do this but "it's not the same"

      • She works for some Jungle Tribe? She's been there and made it with them? She's "one of their guardians in the world" and distributes it? timestamp

      • Mentions having a stroke where everyone told her she was going to die

        • Brought up again later, says she fixed this "by going into [her] own body" timestamp

  • Had a huge fight two days ago, juicy deets timestamp

    • "I've never smoked crack"

      • "No he smoked Heroin" I think she said heroin the shit getting censored out is annoying. He claims he stopped at 22

    • "I know that if I die tomorrow and there is 500'000 dollars because of my life insurance that I pay I don't trust him with the kids and making the right decisions" timestamp

    • Is it true that he doesn't love her like he used to? timestamp

      • "Doesn't show it like he used to"

      • "Together all the time"

      • He wants to play video games

    • Had a cry a couple weeks ago and took some psychedelics to figure his life out timestmap

      • "2CB" not sure if I heard this right I don't know drugs

      • Decided he needs to not quit his vidya because he will resent her for that?

    • Have they seen a therapist together? timestamp

      • She says - She has tried for years but he doesn't want someone to tell him he's wrong

      • He says - can't afford a babysitter? Too expensive

        • They had 7 cancellations for babysitters but finally got one so they could come on this show?

      • Bickering about money timestamp

        • "oh but we have money for World of Warcraft, we have money for stupid shit like-"

        • "-like massages for my wife"

        • "No okay we're going to go into this because he won't let it go"

        • Combined finances "but he just spends"

Finances:

• self-score timestmap

  • Aborted initially to discuss their impending divorce

  • Actual self-score timestamp

    • she says 3 and he says 1

    • he said 7 before but then he watched a couple episodes

    • Mentions that he "adds debt and she doesn't see it" timestamp

      • "I don't even add debt though you can go through and see it"

• Spent 8'000 to move to Oklahoma timestamp

  • 2 and a half months ago

  • Bickering about who wanted to move

  • He had a 20 hour trip fried his brain and they moved to Oklahoma instead to get a job with his father?

  • She's made $2'000 in May, usually $1'500

    • She "does healing" for the moment - with the magic tobacco?

    • Not setting anything aside for taxes, can't afford to?

  • He makes 2'600 a month (3'000 before taxes)

  • She had a hair license in CA, did not transfer to OK but would have with Florida?

• She filed for bankruptcy at some point after her stroke? timestamp

  • beginning of 2023?

  • She paid off most of his debt, put things into her name before bankruptcy?

    • had plans to make more money in CA bigger hair salon

  • She had a "successful business"

  • Landlord said he "doesn't work with women" and had serious issues with the building she was in?

  • She usually makes about $100 an hour, 15 hours a week

• Can their family help out? timestamp

  • His father just had a baby

• Why not move to Florida? tiemstamp

  • he says moving costs

  • she says relapse

    • she moved out at some point?

• Combined finances stuff, she took over handling them when she had the stroke, then she took them back after a little but timestamp

  • Total disarray while he was in control

  • Mentions "deferred interest" for paypal, Best Buy

    • "and she says why didn't I pay more than the minimum and I'm like we have no money to pay more than the minimum"

    • "Every time we do have money he thinks it's like okay we can go out and eat we can go get on my red bulls oh not red bulls umm [indescipherable spanish name] every single day"

    • Mentions that she quit her Starbies habit

    • "Like we would have assistance for food and he would spend a lot of that on energy drinks"

• Credit Card 1 (City Diamond) ($1687) timestamp

  • Minimum payment $56

  • New purchases $43.90

  • $39 interest accrued

  • Lots of Amazon, Apple in-app, Chick-fil-a

    • Apple music?

    • Might be the extra cloud storage for her phone?

    • Some amazon ad-free thing?

  • "We don't go to Chick-fil-a any more"

    • "That's literally the most recent statement!"

• Credit Card 2 (Discover) (7'000) timestamp

  • Had it paid off but then it wasn't

  • LA apartment was infested with cockroaches deemed unlivable

    • "When we came back from a healing convention-"

    • Some excuses?

  • 2238 new purchases

  • 142 minimum payment

  • 113 interest charged

  • Fair bit of eating out on here, some amazons

  • Salon statements timestamp

    • this is where she buys things and resells them

• Car 2020 Kai Telluride ($33'400) timestamp

  • Old car got totalled, he got smashed into and pushed into a semi

  • "actually we got a really great deal on it"

    • She's actually convinced she got a good deal. It's unreal she actually bought hook line and sinker and won't accept she got taken for a ride. Born mark.

  • 72 months, 12% interest?

  • 2021

  • $739 minimum payment

  • good condition but a few scratches in the front, might be small issues inside from kids

  • Something weird where they need checks in paper or they take the interest out of it? Didn't catch this

  • Underwater by $8'000

• Upped her life insurance? timestamp

• She mentions that she is a vegan timestamp

• Jungle Story timestamp

  • Went last year

  • "How'd you afford to go to the jungle?"

    • "Credit cards"

• $78 on some credit card timestamp

  • World of Warcraft - it auto-renewed without him knowing?

  • pays 6 months

  • He played until 2:30 am yesterday night

• "I have a gift" "I am not of this earth I am in human form" timestamp

  • White woman nonsense about restoring the rain forest

  • I see dead people now I don't choose to see it

  • "You don't see them they pass you a message and you give it to the person and they heal I charge $111 for what I do it's not fake"

    • "Trust me I didn't say you couldn't make money off of that"

  • "Fine, tell me something about my self" timestamp

    • it doesn't work like that

    • "It's only when I do hape my higher self will talk to your higher self"

  • Producer Noah will be doing hape in the post-show? I refuse to paypig so no idea how this went

• Credit Card 4 (Priceline) ($91) timestamp

  • A few Amazon purchases

    • She doesn't think they've made any purchases this month?

  • Some movie rent/buying

  • Father of her first child would not let her control the finances timestamp

    • He was breadwinner in that relationship?

    • She shows some sort of organization of her expenses?

    • "Every month I go can we sit down and he hates it"

    • "He literally became a man when he met me becau-"

• Credit Card 5 (Best Buy) (1'883) timestamp

  • "Somebody broke his headphones!"

  • Food, TV, headphones, iPad repair

  • $348 in new purchases

  • $29 in payments

  • $17 interest accrued

  • Based karen moment fighting the employee on the screen protector timestamp

• She's been applying to jobs timestamp

  • Only applied to 5 so far, can only work evenings and wants specific jobs? May or may not be getting a job with Texas Roadhouse

• Credit Card 6 (2'442) timestamp

  • $81 minimum payment

  • $72 in new purchases

  • $82 paid

  • $6 interest accrued

  • interest only just started on this

• Owes money to his grand mother timestamp

  • She will just send money sometimes to bail them out? Separately from that she lent them a lot?

  • already paid back a lot but still owe 4'000 that she wants to

  • Something about taking in some guy from Turkey but booted him "released him with love" timestamp

    • They have a phoneline that he is paying off?

• She is concerned with the welfare of the plant, she decides "it's dying" timestamp

  • It's not dying.

• She gets really ill if she drinks starbucks "since the stroke"

• $1000 on a mattress remaining

  • they partially paid $2000

• MetaZoo timestamp

  • Spent thousands of dollars on it? irl card game?

  • This what they spent their covid bucks on?

  • They tried to be scalpers during the covid bubble they are so fricking stupid it's unreal

  • they think the kickstarter box is worth $1000?

• Caleb presses them on whether they've taken responsiblity for anything ever timestamp

Pie chart timestamp

She's getting 20% disabled for VA ($338) timestamp

Referring back to his analysis regarding the recent Safrican election, our site's best poster said he went back to his parent's in KwaZulu-Natal province.

https://rdrama.net/post/273444/umkhonto-we-sizwe-the-rise-of

But what really seals the deal to my suspicion is the way he phrased the following reply!

"I vehemently oppose circumcision of children and small boys."

And small boys, that just confirms to me precisely why he hates the very notion of circumcision the way that our poor soul does

ULWALUKO:

Basically an ancient initiation rite into manhood practiced by Zulus and Xhosas.

In summary, the ingcibi/indoena (ceremonial surgeon/ spiritual leader/ chieftan) surgically removes the foreskin during the ritual process - after which which the boys/ young-men are isolated into a place of seclusion for a period of time, and restricted of only to only eating certain traditional food, usually red meat for that period.

Now the exact specifics of the post-circumcision ceremony varies tremendously on region, province, sub-tribe, homeland, ethnicity and district. However, the trope is that for about a week to a month, the boy or group of boys are isolated to a hut/facility away from the village/town/community called the bhoma. The restricted diet usually consists of nothing but red meat and water, but depending on the financial state of that specific tribe/community, or their traditions, that ceremonial food can instead be "Pap" (african porridge)

Sometimes water may be restricted to enforce hardship and test the mettle and resolve of the boys.

Again the specifics really fricking depend upon the specific sub-tribe or traditions of said community. The initiation ritual is commonly conducted during late June/early July or late November/ early December each year. the boys/ young-men on the cusp of adulthood who partake in these rite-of-manhood ceremonies are called "Abakhwetha"

In the most extreme variations of these rite-of-manhood ceremonies, the rite is ended, when the temporary bhoma hut of the boy/boys is burned down with all of their clothes the had worn during the ceremony, to demonstrate and symbolize the transition of boy to manhood. Finally, each initiate receives a new super special blanket (usually but not always made by their mothers or betrothed), and walks victoriously back into town wearing nothing but their blanket (nude underneath), with their heads held high, signalling to the rest of their townsmen their glorious and successful transition into manhood!

Again the hut burning thing is extreme and not always a factor of the ceremony, and usually reserved for the upper classes of Zulus/Xhosas if they even add that part to the ceremony of Ulwaluko - but the 2 factors always constant regardless of the variations of the different ceremonies practiced across south africa are,

(1) The circumcision by ceremonial surgeon or tribal cultural leader (awake and without any fricking anesthetic or pain medication, because this is a trial of hardiness, and pain suppressants are for p#ssies)

(2) The special blanket walk back to family, to triumphantly indicate for the rest of your social peers and family your success in the ceremony!

MENSUR:

Now for those of you limp-wristed weak western eurocucks, whom had never known suffering or strife or hardship or famine in this modern world, and don't understand what the frick all this peepee cutting insanity is all about, let me try and explain with a frame of reference.

I made a post many months ago about the insane rite-of-manhood ceremonies in yesteryear's Krautland, called Mensur. Where Kraut upper-classes and aristocracy and club-members, would prove their value and worth amongst their peers in their in standing quasi sword fighting, with fencing swords,

where the actual and unironic objective of the fricking fencing match, is to DELIBERATELY continue sparring with each other to facilitate the acquisition of permanent facial scarring via sword strikes! in fact the Mensur matches would often continue UNTIL at least both opponents were visually scarred on their faces.

The acquisition of these prominent facial scars were so extreme within the social peer pressures enduced circles of Kraut upper classes and high tertiary education clubs in kraut universities, that kraut men would amplify their facial disfigurements by adding fricking salt into their wounds! Or continue to exaggerate/inflame their facial wounds to lengthen the healing wounds and make their facial scares even more prominent.

These facial disfigurements would heighten their social status and their eligibility amongst kraut women! A that time men with clear Mensur scars were considered "handsome" or at least outstanding.

The point of all of this insanity was to demonstrate amongst your peers your resolve, your bravery, your discipline and valor. All qualities valued in men amongst each other, and improving the sexual and romantic worth of men amongst women.

Mensur scars enhanced the standing of kraut men in society and the practice was so fricking prominent in Germany pre-WW2 that the eminence of the stereotype of Kraut Nazi badguys in Hollyweird having facial disfigurements, literally influenced the shitty trope of later yank WW2slop movies of german commanders having facial disfigurements, including non-Mensur induced disfigurements as the later movie directors didn't understand that the scars were historically accurate much of the time.

I know all of you worthless fricking reddit soys will b-word about toxic masculinity in these extreme rituals, without understanding the complex social factors which enabled their formation in the past.

Men needed to demonstrate that in die circumstances and hard times, that they could be counted on. In the medieval Kraut times, and pre-colonial era of South-Eastern Africa there were no police or army or outside help, only the kommando or village militia banding together against outside threats of banditry. You needed to know you could count on your neighbours when it came a fight or shit hitting the fan.

And it usually only applied men, because.....well....you guys saw how worthless those Kraut Foid Policewomen were during the stabbing two days ago, completely parralized and indecisive.

HOW WE GOT HERE:

Since democratization 30 years ago, the peepee cutting ceremonies of Zulus and Xhosas have been perpetually controversial in South African circles.

I've told you guys before that it is hard to compare the relative conservative nature between demographics, and how for example the average Boer/afrikaner is much more religious and conservative than the average Bongoloid, both those in England and the Cape. Well the average black person in SA is even MORE conservative than the average Boer, and NONE more so regarding the infamous Zulus.

When I refer to conservative nature, I mean attitudes regarding homosexuality, anti-immigration sentiment and women's rights. Of all the various black ethnicities, between Lesothos, Sothos, Pedis, Khoisan, Tswanes, Xhosas - NONE are as tribal and batshit insane on average regarding the conservation of their culture and traditions!

Back in 1994, Nelson Mandela and the top-brass of the ANC was so shit scared of not winning a majority in the 1st Democratic election, because Mandela had made a vast coalition between people of so many different tribes and ethnicities, that Mandela had basically bet everything on this final non-violent push. Many had opposed Mandela's approach to a non-violent and democratic overthrow of the Apartheid government, without the loss of critical infrastructure and a violent Civil War like Mozambique, Mandela had wanted to imitate Ghandi's tremendously successful peaceful overthrow of the British colony of India, especially as the ANC had overwhelming international and UN support at that moment in time.

However in that weird moment in 1993-1994, Mandela would confess he was secretly fearful that the Black voting Bloc would be split into hundreds of useless tiny fragmented shit-tier mini-parties. Although we know now in historic hindsight, the ANC would dominate with an astronomical 60 plus fricking percent in that election,

this was not so obvious at the time, and Mandela feared the white racists would state that the tribalism and factionalism within the voting outcome was proof that Apartheid's ending was not so popular amongst the country's minority populations. Of course now in hindsight, the ANC dominating with 65% of the electorate, and dominating so for 30 years onward might seem obvious for those not versed in the thinking of the time.

I go on this giant fricking tangent, because it needs to be understood that Mandela's administration made a metric shitload of concessions to soooooooooooooooooooooo many black tribes, interest groups and separate ANC sub-factions, just so that the ANC collective would remain unified and push through in this momentous and historic election of 1994.

It was these myriads of concessions, which led to Mandela practicing from the onset Nepotism on a national scale. He didn't just give all the best black leaders key roles, but top ANC faction leaders key positions in the ministry, on the provincial level and so on. Mandela believed at the time, it was more important to charge headfirst for Democratization and black enfranchisement, and that the Nepotism would resolve itself with time of course this unfortunately set the precedent on the foundational level of government for nepotism, even if Mandela and his immediate cabinet was themselves competent and charismatic leaders (Anyways that's another story)

The important bit is that one of the most extreme concessions Mandela's admin gave was with regards to autonomous homeland rule, especially for the ethnic group of Zulus, the most populous ethnic group of South Africa (at 22%) and the most powerful voting bloc within the ANC at the time of 1994, and ever since.

The Zulu homelands and parallel societies allowed zulu indoenas and chieftans to tell provincial governments and police to frick off out of their affairs and their internal cultural matters - which is why amongst KwaZulu-Natal has the largest amounts of sexual misconduct in the country in rural regions, as police presence and the supposed feminist mantra of the ANC's equality manifests cannot reach. Combined with the hyper conservative nature of Zulu society on average, and you have constant social drama regarding Zulu's telling other ANC groups to keep their noses out of their cultural affairs.

CONTROVERSY OF ULWALUKO:

Even beyond the r*pe-culture of South Africa, one of the biggest controversial b-word fighting within the country is regarding the legitimacy of young-adult circumcision and ceremonies like Ulwaluko.

Many Zulu-feminist groups put their money where their mouths are and actually DO fight for equality for their male peers unlike Western foids, and have campaigned for over 30 years to end the practices of Ulwaluko, calling it antiquated and barbaric. These women don't usually get far, and it says a lot about the conservative nature of a society, when it is the women of that group complaining the loudest on behalf of their male peers.

The biggest fricking issue with Ulwaluko is that the ceremonial surgeon is often not an actual surgeon. The expertise of the surgeon varies CONSIDERALY across zulu/xhosa society, with some old men being so refined in their craft that they cause minimal suffering for the poor whimpering boys under their care, while others are basically fricking backyard butchers with a cleaver

The variation in the conduct of this foreskin cutting ceremony also means that there are constant present dangers of frickups. Since typically this rite of manhood is done without painkillers and anesthetic, the chances of miscutting, especially as the unlocky boy in question is usually under absolutely horrific agony, is very high. Cuts much deeper than intended, or damage beyond the glans, or even cuts right into the fricking peepee itself has meant that almost a thousand Zulu boys have been recorded to bled to death since 1994.

Compounded with the fact that these ceremonies are held in secret, isolated rural places, away from women and civilization deliberately, the ability to ambulance a boy bleeding to death easily, EVEN IF the batshit insane ceremonial surgeon is compassionate enough to try and save that boy, is slim, if he doesn't just tell the dying boy to literally "walk it off you p#ssuy" I am literally, LITERALLY not joking.

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/south-africa-circumcision-ritual-a-dangerous-route-to-manhood-1728171

====(from article)

Coffee Bay, South Africa: Naked, covered in white clay mud, and with his peepee wrapped in leaves, Abongile Maqegu, 20, sits in a hut in South Africa recovering from his circumcision -- a traditional ritual that can prove fatal.

For Maqegu, it has been a gruelling initiation test that marks his arrival as an adult, and the pain is an essential part of the experience.

"You must go through that pain to show that you are a man," he told AFP outside the coastal village of Coffee Bay about 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Umtata in Eastern Cape province.

"We don't even think of (getting) a medical circumcision because it is the easy way out. We laugh at those who go to hospitals."

Maqegu is one of thousands of youths from the Xhosa ethnic group attending this year's annual winter initiation schools across Eastern Cape province.

After his foreskin is cut off by a tribal elder using a knife, he is kept in the small thatched rondavel hut with two other initiates for up to four weeks, with a "bush doctor" present at all times monitoring their wounds.

The initiates are allowed no contact with women, and spend their time playing cards, applying mud and stoking the smoky fire to try to keep warm.

"If you go to hospital you are weak, you are not a man. Your wound must not be treated with Betadine (disinfectant)," Maqegu said.

"There is special traditional medicine for that and it heals fast."

Secretive ceremony:

He revealed tree leaves tied like a bandage around his genitals, which are also covered in a traditional healing ointment and held to one side by string.

The ritual is revered and guarded by the Xhosa people, but the unhygienic conditions -- and abuse by some initiation schools -- exacts a heavy toll.

At least 11 youths have already died during this southern hemisphere winter in Eastern Cape, according to provincial officials, while the government says several hundred have died nationwide in initiation schools since 1995.

Often the cause is infection from a botched circumcision, which can lead to peepee amputation surgery.

Circumcision has also been demonstrated to be a powerful weapon in the fight against HIV, by helping to protect men from the AIDS virus.

But specialists -- meeting in Paris from Sunday for a four-day forum on HIV/AIDS -- remain worried about botched operations and poor hygiene.

Other risks include dehydration or maltreatment by initiation leaders, who conduct the secretive circumcision rituals deep in the mountains.

Recognised as a man:

In another grass-thatched hut, 200 metres away, sitting on a reed mat, is 20-year-old Fezikhaya Tselane, who has just returned from his circumcision rites in the remote bush.

As he nurses the sore wound, his bush doctor sits close by, surrounded by dirty pots, plates and empty beer bottles strewn over the floor.

"I have been waiting for this day. All my brothers have gone through this process," Tselane told AFP, entirely covered in white mud, which is meant to ward off evil spirits as well as preserve body warmth.

"In our Xhosa culture, if you don't go through traditional circumcision you are not recognised as a man.

"Now I can marry, have my own house and kids and not depend on my parents."

Mxolisi Dimaza, chairman of the Eastern Cape provincial health committee, said authorities were determined to curb injuries and deaths in the initiation schools.

"This year a considerable amount of resources were made available so that we do not experience many more deaths," he told AFP after his recent field visit to several initiation sites.

"However, there are still problem areas where we have illegal initiation schools. These are where the school itself is not registered and the initiates are often below 18 years old."

The province has hired 35 4x4 vehicles to patrol initiation practices in a region of steep hills, dirt roads and rough tracks.

It has also passed a law setting out a minimum age of 18, and establishing a registry of accredited bush doctors and schools. From the age of 16, boys can be circumcised with their parents' permission.

Medical risks:

Dimaza appealed for any initiates suffering from infections or ill-health to go immediately to hospital, adding that parents should not feel social pressure for their children to have traditional circumcisions.

"It is our culture -- but if the parents want their child to have it medically, we don't object," he said.

The tradition has become tainted in recent years by commercialisation, with some bush doctors charging large amounts of money, while some initiates have been found to be as young as 13.

Initiation ceremonies have also spread to other provinces such as KwaZulu Natal and Mpumalanga, boosted in part by UN-backed information that male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually-acquired HIV infection by 60 percent.

For one bush doctor, proper care should mean that initiates are able to experience the ritual in a safe and deeply spiritual manner.

"You have to be careful and take good care, otherwise the wound gets sceptic," said Lukholo Marhenene, 21, who has been nursing initiates for three years.

"You must change the leaves often and keep the wound clean and dry.

"During the month I will be attending to him, he stays in the hut. Only his father and other boys who have already gone through initiation are allowed to visit.

"After two weeks, we slaughter a goat to appease the spirits."

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

https://www.ajol.info/index.php/actat/article/view/49044

Many Zulu/Xhosa christians have cultural disagreements between the rest of their peers about the legitimacy of these ceremonies, and often have conflict regarding their faiths.

"Among the Xhosa of South Africa, male circumcision remains a very important ritual. The question as to whether Christians should accept these rites and continue to send their children to traditional schools practising it is very important. In this article the implications of the ritual and the way in which proponents use the Bible are evaluated. It is argued that there should be an honest encounter with the rite from a biblical perspective. Solutions should be evaluated and explained. From a Christian perspective total rejection is not possible, but the church should remain faithful to the truth of the gospel."

They are NOT even outright rejecting circumcision or via the ritual, only arguing how this important cultural artifact fits within their cristian faith!!

https://mg.co.za/article/2013-08-16-00-the-boys-who-lost-their-manhood/

Sometimes the boys survive, but the botched circumcision by the backyard butchers, causes such infection, that amputation of their is needed to save their lives

"According to government statistics, 26 of the Eastern Cape's 39 initiation-related deaths this year happened in Pondoland, a mountainous 50km-wide coastal strip that stretches between the Mthatha and Mtamvuna rivers in the former Transkei."

https://web.archive.org/web/20211003000555/http://www.ulwaluko.co.za/Problems.html

"Details of the ritual are to be kept secret from females or non-initiated males. This complicates supervision, especially in Pondoland where the majority of the elders have not undergone the ritual themselves. It also impedes discussion of problems in a public space."

Yes what's especially heinous and absurd is the hypocracy of many Zulu elders whom advocate for the continuation of these ceremonies, or the fricking REVIVAL of these ceremonies where they had fallen out of favor - even if they THEMSELVES had never gone through with it!! And thus have no hereditary experience regarding the clean and fricking proper foreskin cutting in the middle of the bush, with no sanitary preparations! And just expecting boys as young as 16 years old to fricking heal naturally within dusty isolated huts with bleeding pricks!!!!

Sometimes the poor frickers are subjected to dull knives without antiseptics!

And on and one you guys don't have to read the images to see the host of medical problems with this practice.

SECRECY ulwaluko.co.za WEBSITE CONTROVERSY:

https://mg.co.za/article/2009-07-18-tackling-the-matter-headon/

The worst parts of these ceremonies is their inherent cultural secrecy. Details of the ritual are not supposed to be disclosed to females or non-initiated males; according to the principle of 'what happens in the bush, stays in the bush'

So many peeps, including Zulu peeps and zulu/xhosa women aren't even aware that the nature of these manhood ceremonies can be utterly depraved and under incompetent supervision. Zulu mothers encourage their young sons to undergo these manhood rites so that they might find a girl who finds them worthy, and only in hindsight realizes to her horror the gruesome ordeal in which she had placed her son in.

Zulu liberal peeps who speak against the practice are called f@ggot gays as only homosexuals don't have their pricks properly circumcised. The cultural pressure amongst Zulu and Xhosa rural peeps (which is pretty much MOST of them lol) is just that fricking strong.

"Cultural prejudice may be so great that uncircumcised or 'improperly' circumcised men are attacked and beaten for their lack of conformity"

Back in 2014 some filthy Mayo Cheesehead !dutch fricker placed his nose into Zulu/Xhosa business and made a website called ulwaluko.co.za, where he placed gore pictures of botched circumcisions and amputations and infections and so on,

to warm Safricans about the dangers and lack of proper trained medical supervision on these secretive ceremonies. The followed a massive shitstorm, as the publication of these photographs sparked outrage among many traditional leaders in the Eastern Cape.

https://www.dispatchlive.co.za/news/2014-01-11-outrage-over-graphic-circumcision-website/

====(from article)

But Eastern Cape House of Traditional Leaders deputy chairman Prince Zolile Burns-Ncamashe said it was “disgusting” that a foreign national could “undermine” the country's customs.

“If I had the power I would send officials to arrest this doctor immediately,” Burns-Ncamashe said.

Nkululeko Nxesi of the Community Development Foundation of South Africa, an NGO that runs initiation rescue centres, said the website was an embarrassment to the AmaXhosa nation.

“This will undermine the work that is being done by traditional leaders and government and us,” Nxesi said. “He should respect the cultural principles and processes of this nation. This embarrassing thing he has done assumes that there is nothing being done to curb this.”

====(end)

SNEEDMAN:

I think from this context we can realize poor @sneedman 's autism regarding his 10 000 anti-circumcision posts.

It is very likely our boi was forced to attend a shitty and unpleasant Ulwaluko ceremony where he had to endure the godforsaken rite of having precious foreskin, without painkillers, removed why grinding his teeth

poor sneedman seems like a sensitive soul, as in his writings.

Alternatively it's my theory that the ceremonial surgeon cut off a piece of his in a botched circumcision, and this has haunted him ever since.

Likely all the zulu girls and black chicks mock his prick because it is now 25% shorter due to the botched cutting, and reject his tiny Zulu peepee for being only 1 foot and 10 inches instead to the usual 2 feet and 30 inches BBC the usual Zulu has.

And now our poor Sneedman had one day cocked out on Benzos and saw shitty BBC on TV (British Broadcasting Corporation), and saw Holly on one of those shitty daytime soapies,

and thought to himself in his endless inceldom blackpilling "Maybe black chicks are hoooores, but white chicks with african @ssess may still give my 1 foot and 10 inches microdick a chance

Which is why he spams his posts as such!

Hi, I just wanted to do a quick post on a new political party that's sprung up in South Africa.

History

During Apartheid in South Africa, the ANC was formed as a resistance group. Although things began peacefully, it soon became apparent that force would be needed to oppose the often violent government. Hence, in 1961, the paramilitary wing uMkhonto we Sizwe was formed. Commenting on the paramilitary wing, Nelson Mandela had the following to say:

it was only when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle, and to form Umkhonto we Sizwe

The legacy of uMkhonto we Sizwe, or MK, remains controversial, as the group is behind what could be deemed terrorist acts, including the controversial Church Street Bombing of 1983. The attack saw a car bomb go off outside the Nedbank Square Building, killing 19 and wounding 217 civilians. This is far from the only bombing the group was responsible for.

In 1963, Mandela and other MK leaders were arrested and put on trial for high treason at the Riviona Trial. They received life sentences, though Mandela only served 27 years. The group was formally disbanded in 1993 as negotiations were underway to end apartheid.

Jacob Zuma

Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma has the auspicious honor of having been a South African president despite having only completed the 6th grade (he dropped out due to financial constraints). Throughout his presidency, he got up to several shenanigans which @kaamrev has written about extensively.

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

Perhaps his most controversial moment was when he r*ped a woman he knew was HIV+ then showered afterwards to protect himself. Even with this drama, it wasn't enough to keep him away from presidency. Why? TRIBALISM. You see, Jacob Zuma is Zulu, and this inspires a lot of tribalism from other Zulus who want to see one of their own in power. Although he may seem crass to the outsider, he represents the patriarchal thinking that characterises many Zulu households. This tribalism is so strong that when he was arrested in 2021, it triggered almost nationwide protests that saw stores being looted and infrastructure being destroyed.

https://rdrama.net/post/227710/marseyflagsouthafrica-south-africa-burns-marseyflagsouthafrica-the

uMkhonto we Sizwe Part 2 Electric Boogaloo

Named after the paramilitary group, uMkhonto we Sizwe is a political party formed in December 2023. Its formation stems from Zuma's refusal to endorse ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa. The formation of the group has been met with resistance from ex uMkhonto we Sizwe member, and the group was taken to court, though it was ruled that the party was legal.

Zuma has been deemed ineligible to serve in Parliament due to his fifteen-month prison sentence. However, his face appears on ballots and advertising for the group. Why? TRIBALISM. It is Jacob Zuma, corruption and all, who draws in voters.

The group has performed frighteningly well, finishing in third place in the national elections with approximately 15% of all votes.

The group seriously cut into the votes of the ANC, stripping it of its majority rule and making it perhaps the most important political group of the elections for this reason. The majority of its votes come from KwaZulu-Natal which is highly populated by Zulu people who remain loyal to Zuma. The high vote count is likely good for dramacoin, and we will probably see quite a few scandals in the next four years. Among other things, the group is:

• anti-foreigner

• anti-homosexuality

• pro-land expropriation without compensation

conclusion

I've just moved back to KZN to be closer to family. They are DA supporters despite being Zulu, so this whole ordeal is shocking to them. I'm afraid of what poor service delivery and corruption will unfold under the leadership of MK but it's nothing new in South Africa.

I like my new apartment. It has an ocean view and watching the huge sea calms me and makes me think of my problems a lot less. I'm just a small, insignificant speck on the face of the planet, and my problems won't matter at all in a few decades when I'm dead. Really puts things into perspective. Tune in next time when I discuss Sodom and Gomorrah.

I've had insomnia for about a week, so all I can do is .

I think I've finally come up with a good way to explain what happened in the Lebanese Civil War. Telling a straightforward narrative takes 15 hours and that's only if you skip over a lot of the details. Even if you were willling to take that much time, it's just too complicated to fit into your head. So instead I'm going to take a snapshot of where each faction was at five year intervals from 1975 to 1990. I think that's more than enough to show how fricked-up the conflict was. You'll notice that by the end of the war everyone has fought with and been allied with pretty much everyone else. It's not uncommon to see one party flip between alliances twice before the war is over. You might think that arbitrarily skipping around every 5 years must be leaving out something important, but as you'll see, there were very few actual permanent territorial gains or decisive achievements by anyone so you're not missing much.

I start out with Syria because it is the most important player throughout. If you were going to sum up the war in the simplest way possible, it wasn't between Muslims and Christians or part of the Cold War. It was a struggle by the Syrians to keep other foreign countries and their local allies from taking control of Lebanon. Every other conflict ultimately ties into this. Countless other countries came, got involved, and got out but the Syrians were there from start to finish. When the war finally ended, they were the "winners" left in power over the ruins of Lebanon.

1975

Phoenicia Hotel, 1974.

Syria's most pressing interest in Lebanon was simple: Keep the Israelis out. Only 2 yeras earlier there had been a full scale war and there was every reason to believe it could break out again at any time. Damascus is only 30km down the road from the Majdal Anjar border crossing. If the Israeli troops were stationed there they could be in the capital within hours.

But Assad had other more long term concerns. There had been 10 presidents in the 25 years betweeen World War II and Assad seizing power. He had held on far longer than them, an entire 5 years, but he could hardly expect his regime was built on a sturdy foundation. Many of those coup plots were hatched by dissidents taking refugee in Lebanon. But Syria could not simply close its borders and ignore the outside world. Its economy was much too closely linked to Lebanon's, especially the connection between Damascus and the port of Beirut. Over a million tons of cargo followed this route in 1975. It could not be replaced. If a rival power like Iraq got a presence in Lebanon it would be a foot in the doorway of Syria.

Rare photo of notorious Fatah commando Abu Marsey and his daughter, 1976. Credit to @houellebecq.

Assad's more ambitious goal was to take control of the Palestinian liberation movement. The Palestinians were a chaotic, disruptive force in the region. If that energy could be directed away from hurting Assad's interests and toward his enemies it would give him a great advantage in dealing with the other Arab states. Taking up the leadership of the Palestinian cause would also bring great prestige in Syria itself and the whole Arab nation. Beyond that, Assad personally loathed Arafat since working with him in the 1960s. He would feel much better dealing with a compliant vassal, hopefully part of as-Saiqa, the Palestinian branch of the Syrian Ba'ath Party.

Assad's reply when Kamal Joumblatt insisted on trying to win a military victory over the Christian militias.

He was not particularly drawn to either side of Lebanon's domestic squabbling between Muslims and Christians. He had long cultivated ties with important Christian leaders like President Sulemein Franjieh as well as Muslim Arab nationalists and revolutionaries. The one thing he didn't want was for either side to win a total victory and ethnically cleanse the other. That would bring chaos to his doorstep and possibly even worse, a unified state in Lebanon strong enough to defy his meddling. Oddly enough this meant that he shared a desire for a peaceful settlement with the Americans and he did not turn up his nose at the chance to cooperate with them.

1980

Hafez al-Assad, the protagonist of our tale.

The Camp David Accords left Syria in dire straits. It now had to face the overwhelming military power of Israel on its own. In the past the Saudis had grudgingly bankrolled its army as its contribution to the struggle against Israel, but now that was on the back burner. They were spooked by the Iranian revolution and their own internal troubles and drawing closer to the USA. Syria's friendly relations with the new Iranian regime further isolated it from fellow Arabs.

In this desperate situation, the Syrians and Palestinians found they were forced to work together as they were the only two countries still in active military confrontation with Israel. Jordan and now Egypt had been neutralized. It didn't take a genius to figure out the Israelis would try for Lebanon next. Assad now had to try to keep the Palestinian presence alive so that they and their Lebanese allies could block any attempt by the Christian militias to sign a peace treaty with Israel.

Gen. Mustafa Tlass tries to make sense of contradictory intelligence reports, 1982.

Syria was now more dependent than ever on the Soviets. But the Soviets had been burned by ungrateful Arabs too many times in the past. Syria in particular had angered them by launching the 1973 war without consulting them and playing footsie with the USA during the mid-1970s. While the Americans had continued to supply Israel with cutting edge weapons during this period, Syria was left with equipment 10 years out of date. This would have disastrous consequences when they met in battle.

1985

Shatila refugee camp, Beirut. After the massacre by Israel's allies it was shelled for years by Syria's allies.

Syria's position had flipped from desperation to confidence over the last 5 years. The pieces were all falling into place. Inside Syria, he had survived the Hama uprising, beating the Muslim Brotherhood down for a generation. Israel was pulling back to its border zone in the south and would never again strike deep into Lebanon. But first they had done Assad's dirty work for him, driving out Arafat and most of his troops. The Americans and French had tried tried to intervene but they too had gone home. At this point there was no external power able or willing to seriously contest Syrian domination of Lebanon.

All that remained was to consolidate these gains. Damascus aimed to neutralize the Palestinian threat permanently by backing Abu Musa's anti-Arafat defectors from Fatah and reducing the refugee camps that still defied him to rubble. The Lebanese Forces were a thorn in the side right now, but likewise a carrot and stick approach could be used to break it up into rival factions and bring them under control. As the Israelis left, the Druze once again switched sides back to Damascus. Once the Shi'a, Christian, and Druze leaders were on board it would only be a matter of time before they accepted Syria's dominant position and ended the war.

Syria had suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Israelis in 1982, but the latter had no appetite for more more military adventures. In the wake of the disaster the Soviet Union, apparently as strong as ever, reequiped them with modern weapons.

1990

You ever notice that whenever this dumbass did something really stupid it radically changed the course of world events?

Years of Assad's machinations as well as world and regional events came together to finally put him into position to "win" the Lebanese Civil War. Rival countries had learned to stay out of the quagmire. All major factions inside Lebanon (apart from Aoun's resurgent Lebanese Armed Forces) had been gradually worn down by war, bribery, and assassination until they were unable to resist. Now it was time to bring the international community together to acknowledge Syria's triumph.

Fortuitously, Saddam Hussein picked this moment to make one of his world-changing catastrophic blunders. His invasion of Kuwait brought together the US and all major powers into a united front against Iraq. The Americans quietly acquiesced to Syrian dominion over Lebanon as the price for joining the coalition. The flow of arms and ammunition from Iraq to Aoun's forces, the last hold outs fighting for Lebanese independence, was cut off. Now nothing was left to stop Syria from using military force to crush any remaining opposition.

As favorable as the regional situation was, the collapse of the Soviet Union meant it was time for the Syrians to accept compromise, not push their luck. Without a superpower patron to protect them it was impossible for Syria to win a full scale war against its many stronger foes. There was nothing they could do if Israel or America went in Desert Storm style with overwhelming force. So the Syrians went into the Taif negotiations willing to let the Saudis have a slice of the economic and political pies in order to placate the Arabs and the West.

Epilogue

Aleppo, Syria, 2010s.

It cannot be denied that Assad was ultimately the winner of the struggle. At the end of the day, everyone else had fled the battlefield and only the Syrians remained. Eventually in 2005 they left under massive pressure from within Lebanon and the rest of the world, but their tentacles remain embedded in the military and security services. His regime survived to be inherited by his son who has managed to stay in power despite enormous efforts to overthrow him.

But victory had come at a price that only someone like Assad was willing to pay. Thousands of Syrian troops were killed. Most of his allies in Lebanon were assassinated at some point over the 15 year period. Beyond these tangible wounds, Syria had been gravely hurt in more subtle ways. It was an international pariah, never to be forgiven by either Western or Arab countries. And perhaps worst of all, those long years of war and occupation reinforced in the Syrians the idea that looting, torture, and assassination are the proper cowtools for solving problems. When Syria's own civil war broke out, the younger Assad tried to fix it in the same way and brought ruin to his country.

Pre-Homestuck

2004

Andrew Hussie came online in the midst of a boom in webcomics during the early 2000s, his interest in computer science and adventure games inspiring him to create his own called Team Special Olympics. The comic perfectly frames Hussie as another child of the early 2000s internet, irreverent and ambitious with zero interest in political correctness. The comic is unremarkable but evolves into a collaborative process, drawing together 288 people as the comic moves from Hussie's hands to others after 2006. Hussie moves onward and upward, seeing the possibility of an adventure game webcomic which allows for user input he creates Jailbreak which serves as the foundation for all of Hussie's later work, the simplistic structure and irreverent humor driven by user commands becomes his calling card.

2006

Jailbreak is the format at its most simple, presenting a simple narrative that is totally open-ended for audience exploration, little thought was put by Hussie into what would happen. By the end, Hussie started to have an inkling of the possibilities of the format, building increasingly complex narratives from dissonant user commands which served to create a dynamic story with split storylines that merge.

2007

Hussie takes the end of Jailbreak, narrowly the fantasy elements introduced by user request, and spins them into Bard Quest with an accompanying website called MS Paint Adventure. The story is never finished though serves as a progression of Jailbreak into a more coherent world and characters with greater authorial control and highlights Hussie's obsession with clowns which will become very important later. The story features timeline splits which would figure into Homestuck in a major way.

2008

Hussie abandoned Bard Quest within an unfinished state for a film noir detective story called Problem Sleuth. Hussie having finally gotten a grip on how to create his faux adventure game webcomic driven by user command starts fresh. The story begins with a recreation of Jailbreak with the titular problem sleuth escaping a locked room before blossoming into a complex adventure that deftly weaves video game references, internet culture, and science fiction within a tapestry driven by user command with comparatively little authorial nudging. This is Hussie at his most nimble, allowing user commands to dictate the story while weaving all these dissonant threads into something that is totally coherent and extensive. The story is complex but manageable, the characters numerous but memorable, and the quirks of the systems nuanced but parsable. Problem Sleuth receives a proper ending, the first story of Hussie's to receive an ending of substance, as the symphony of Problem Sleuth reaches a satisfying final movement.

Spades Slick and the Midnight Crew originate here and are carried into Homestuck as well as the fixation on an alterworld.

He also makes some Star Trek edits.

Homestuck

2009

Comic Itself

Hussie, high on the success of the very well-received Problem Sleuth, decides to set to work on his next project inspired by Earthbound and the percolating video game elements and internet culture that seeped into Problem Sleuth. This next project would be defined by these elements from the start rather than being introduced later as additions. The project is termed Homestuck, starting from a simple image and blossoming into an incomprehensibly complex and long story which wraps around itself. The key differences between Homestuck and Problem Sleuth are evident in hindsight, Homestuck was planned like a traditional story, in advance, which meant that user commands were still used but contorted toward furthering the story already planned as well as the length, the exponentially scaling complexity necessitating deft management. Authorial intent was a dictatorship veiled by an inherited aesthetic anarchy from Problem Sleuth. Homestuck was so popular from the outset that Hussie started to select from the innumerable suggestions for user commands exactly how he thought would fit best. Eventually, he gave up the charade and turned Homestuck into an authorial dictatorship with vestigial user command inputs.

That doesn't mean that Homestuck lacked audience participation, the participation was transformed from being a direct submission of user commands into referencing and interacting with an ever-growing fandom. This produced a dialogue between the audience and the author which transfixed many, drawing people into an all-consuming obsession with Homestuck. He inducts more people into the Homestuck team, including a young Toby Fox.

Other distinctive elements of Homestuck would be a very extensive multimedia format, sometimes featuring elaborate games, and typing quirks, every character had not just a distinct vocabulary but an associated typing quirk which followed very rigid rules. This sometimes made certain dialogue inconvenient to read but also made roleplaying as that character very obvious and easy.

Within a year the comic moves through four distinct acts, each focusing upon a different human character, John, Jane, Dave, and Rose. They're introduced, and moved through running jokes with a complex computer science-inspired video game world overlaid on the real one. A Lot of references are made to computer programming, indicative of the composition of the fanbase of his at the time, these would be gradually substituted with insular fandom jokes. The fandom would be the main point of reference when the comic entered Act 6 with other elements being functionally deprecated.

For instance, characters had inventory accessed through computer programming mechanisms like punch cards and arrays

2010

Comic Itself

The comic reaches an apex with the release of Act 5, introducing a break from the previous narrative with the introduction of trolls, a break which prompts some to tell people to just start with the trolls. These characters, exaggerated caricatures referencing different parts of internet culture and themselves a direct reference to internet trolls, cause Homestuck to catch fire which allows Hussie a lot of lateral movement. They also serve to drastically reconfigure the composition of the fanbase, a change which would worm its way into the comic itself.

This period, Act 5 and Act 5 Act 2 serves as the apex of Hussie's reputation and sanity. He found himself with a lot of money, a lot of influence, and a lot of fans,[S] Cascade released on Newgrounds and crashed the site, and Snoop Dog tweets Homestuck fanart.

Favorable waters for a young artist who wanted to set the world of fire. Hussie, wanting to interact with his growing fanbase, creates a Tumblr account which puts him in alignment with the Tumblr portion of the fanbase as well as founding What Pumpkin to manage the growing business enterprises like music CDs from the much beloved Homestuck music team. The fanbase was devoted enough that they even made a fan-made animation. Interestingly Acts 1-5 serve as the halfway mark for the comic in terms of pages and two years of the total seven years of the comic's lifespan.

The Homestuck fandom was prolific and unemployed giving lots of content produced

Also fancomics

The Decline

2011

Comic Itself

The comic exited Act 5 Act 2 with a change up, relieving itself of all the major characters and events for a soft reset which would return the comic to its roots. The narrative had grown complex and alien to the origins which had incubated it and the solution to the insanity of [S] Cascade was the humbleness of Act 6 Act 1, a new set of human characters within an altered world that mirrored Earth. Homestuck starts to lose its fanbase after the dizzying heights of [S] Cascade, the newly introduced cast eventually links up with the old one after years of pages leaving the comic deeply disjointed for a time. Importantly there is a change in direction for Homestuck's style, within the first 5 Acts pages are released frequently, often multiple released within a single day, and the dialogue is long but has a reasonable amount of accompanying actions. From Act 6 onward the comic would start to attrition fans, the quality of the comic starts to deteriorate as the threads start to not neatly weave together as they once did, the characters start to become more numerous with uneven development, which came along with a slower release of pages with more dialogue per page.

As the threads grew more numerous and the layers of the story more complex the issues started to compound, this is something which only becomes a problem when entering into Act 6 and intensifies with each passing year until they're resolved with the retcon.

Hussie's Orbiters

Homestuck general on 4chan

/co/ on 4chan had a recurrent thread, /hsg/, establishing the concept of a general of the board on the basis that without it the rest of the board would become unusable as a result. The thread was filled with role players and other degenerates, members scheme ways to infiltrate Hussie's circles which eventually fills his court with neurotic sycophants. The most notorious being an arch sexual degenerate ipgd which would slip into Hussie's circle.

How our two lovebirds met

The Drama Starts Here

2012

Homestuck Kickstarter

With Homestuck in full swing and with a planned ending on the horizon Hussie started to look toward the future, his most vaunted vision was the creation of a Sierra-style adventure game which had served as the inspiration for Problem Sleuth and Homestuck. He envisioned this as a minor diversion that wouldn't crossover with the main story and wouldn't take that much of Hussie's time with absent details beyond an announcement date of 2014. The project, later christened Hiveswap, receives 2.5 million dollars with lavish promises.

Here's a timeline for reference

Comic Itself

Hussie introduces the Dancestors, mirrors of the trolls, which were all Tumblr references. Like a social justice obsessed volcel obsessed with trigger warnings and a suckysucky geisha that spoke in broken Japanese. These proved to be controversial.

2013

Comic Itself

This period had a single notable hiccup which in hindsight would serve as an ominous grave marker, he would refer to the human characters as Caucasian, to anyone sensible this was obvious. Dave Strider's character only worked in the context of being white but this broke head canon, Hussie apologizes in a groveling nonsensical post on Tumblr before abandoning the site and some of the tarot cards are changed to DEI equivalents presenting the human characters as a rainbow of races. This starts Hussie's descent into being a broken buck. The only criticism he would take was the progressive political demands to remove problematic elements conceded with ostentatious apologies while he would be belligerent to everything else. Shortly after Hussie stopped updating the comic for a year to work on the game and other particulars to the growing Homestuck business empire, termed the Gigapause, which combined with the changing of the guard in cast served to end most people's Homestuck experience.

Homestuck Kickstarter

What Pumpkin Studios with Hussie at the head decided to take a short diversion from the main path with a dating sim called Namco High where you can date the ship from Galaga alongside a smattering of references to Homestuck.

Following on the heels of the Hiveswap Kickstarter the Undertale Kickstarter was created by Toby ‘Radiation' Fox who had led the Homestuck music team. This was given front-page treatment by Hussie and without him knowing the torch had been passed.

2014

Homestuck Kickstarter

In 2014, the year the game was supposed to be released, Hussie stated that his work on the project was finished with the rest being handled by a studio handpicked to give the most authentic Homestuck experience possible, a team called the Odd Gentlemen.

The Odd Gentlemen was an out of the way studio that had made puzzle adventure games during the dark age of the genre which made them a seemingly perfect fit for Hiveswap and for the King's Quest revival which had them serving two masters.

With 2014 closing a surprise announcement was made, The Odd Gentlemen weren't working on Hiveswap and the game would be passed to What Pumpkin Studios for finishing touches. The game would also be released in an episodic format with a second game released after called Hauntswitch. All of this occurring during the closing months of Hiveswap's release year led to speculation, why this drastic change in structure and a change in studio, the answer would be given by ipgd one of Hussie's friends.

The Odd Gentlemen had taken 788,000 dollars and had spent that money making King's Quest and Wayward Manor, Neil Gaiman's game, then went radio silent toward Hussie. The one-year pause was reframed as caused by the Odd Gentlemen constantly cucking Hussie as they funneled money into projects to earn a real place in the industry rather than a webcomic for tweens. They presented to Hussie an unusable demo that had eaten most of the Kickstarter budget which hadn't been consumed by physical rewards. The Odd Gentlemen presented a deal to Hussie, they would get back half the money that they were given, 390,000 dollars, in exchange for no further action against them. The beleaguered and cucked Hussie accepted this given that very little Kickstarter money remained after the Odd Gentlemen and naive physical rewards had eaten almost all of it. The turn to an episodic structure was an attempt to keep the raft afloat by getting a cash infusion mid production despite the fact that everyone interested in the game had already bought it.

The first real side project which was actually released is Paradox Space, a traditionally styled comic that is ‘dubiously canon', a distinction that would become very important later. The project relied on guest writers from Hussie's increasingly large stable of talent and lasted an entire year before being shuttered. Those involved had their names scrubbed from the project.

This official story would be cemented through the use of an NDA.

The actual story, corroborated by inside sources, is that Hussie failed to provide the proper documentation for the planning of Hiveswap, stalling the project and leaving the Odd Gentlemen unable to continue working. Hussie then tasked them with working on the Act 7 animation, doing 3D work, which eventually resulted in the Odd Gentlemen deprioritizing the project to refocus on game development. Hussie then demanded that the Odd Gentlemen finish Hiveswap immediately as King's Quest was set to ship, causing the Odd Gentlemen to transfer the project the What Pumpkin. The design document which would form the basis of the game would only be completed at the time when the game was intended to originally ship, throwing the project totally off track by Hussie's mismanagement.

An Unholy Axis

2015

Homestuck Kickstarter

The traditional telling is that Hussie is stripped from the comic again with another long pause which pummels remaining interest in an already beleaguered franchise. Most of the fandom has left, and most of the people who are talking about the comic aren't talking about the new pages, Homestuck has started to become a zombie with its life force drained by an ailing video game project which necessitates completion.

Hussie, a battered housewife at this point, personally oriented the project within his crack team hand selected by the studio which he helmed. To inspire faith in the project a 3D trailer of Hiveswap was released in 2015 which is noticeably incomplete as the game was restarted due to nothing the Odd Gentlemen provided being salvageable. King Quest is released afterward with stolen Hiveswap money to good reviews rubbing salt in Hussie's wounds.

An announcement is made that Hiveswap is now a 2D game, scrapping the work done because the money to finish a 3D version wasn't there, news about the team at What Pumpkin starts to bleed through the veil as people start to speculate and get irate at the perceived incompetence of the Hussie and his crew. Hussie's penchant for secrecy met his perennial organizational incompetence in increasingly public ways.

According to inside sources Hussie had been handed a workable version of Hiveswap Act 1 as early as 2014, needing to be cleaned up but nearing completion. This was a truncated and 3D Act 1 which was scrapped, the transition to 2D and scrapping attributable to Hussie's penchant for disappearing for long periods of time before returning to order sweeping changes. The transition to 2D was done on a whim and the money issue could have been papered over with merchandising money but Hussie had a consistent policy of keeping money tight and letting projects fail if it passed an arbitrarily allotted amount. Hussie consistently acted in arbitrary manners then used the cowtools available to keep an oath of silence around that fact, the important conversations occurring behind closed doors with his inner circle which would then be dictated outward in grand sweeping changes.

Another pause, termed the Omegapause which lasts six months is done to accommodate and the decision is made that Act 7 will be a single flash animation.

Importantly during this period Undertale, announced after Hiveswap was released, it became an indie sensation and served as the surrogate replacement for Homestuck for many.

Hussie's Orbiters

At this point it's clear that Hussie is an arbitrary God which disappears for large amounts of time before ordering sweeping changes upon his return, most of those working upon Homestuck had limited or no access to him. The only ones that had consistent and meaningful access to Hussie and could influence him were a core cast of characters. The most notable being ipgd, plucked from /hsg/ after sending Hussie a horse dildo before slowly burrowing herself ever deeper into Hussie's core group. The dynamics of the inner workings of Homestuck meant that that Hussie's inner ring had the ability to modify canon through suggestion with Hussie, guiding the future of the comic according to their fanfiction desires. ipgd becomes, with zero talent, a leech which acts as Hussie's attack dog to fabricate narratives and Hussie's Yoko Ono. Certain changes like Dave being retconned as gay can be attributable to ipgd to mirror her degenerate p-do fanfic. Allegedly you could trade kitty or trussy for changes to canon. Like being able to create Davepetasprite or make Vriska trans.

An ipgd vine making Dave gay

The What Pumpkin stable are neurotic progressives which are fans first and workers second, they were selected first for alignment with political values that Hussie had adopted during the surge in Homestuck's popularity on Tumblr. The Hussie of Team Special Olympics had been buckbroken into one which increasingly became afraid of his own fan base and fearful of crossing a social justice line that wasn't natural to him. His irreverence had transformed into a hollow shell as he started to apologize for jokes and surround himself with people from the Tumblr section of the fandom which meddled with his work.

Hussie, embattled and with a string of self-inflicted failure, sought to pander to progressives to circle the wagon around his dying project more and more, relying on political partisans to stave off any criticism as attacks on a wholesome progressive eboy. These progressives were noticeably incompetent and antagonistic on Twitter, a place that Hussie treated like LinkedIn.

2016

Comic Itself

The comic approaches a close, Caliborn wrecks the cast enough that the only solution is to Retcon reality to the moment before Vriska dies, this serves as the most controversial decision of the comic as it overwrites most characters character arc and effectively deprecates 95% of Act 6. All of the character development is alluded obliquely in a friendship montage and the conflict is resolved in a big dumb fight scene which omits most of the plot elements of the story.

Act 7 is substance less, not really resolving anything and ending the series with an endless amount of loose threads which leaves many faithful unsatisfied.

Homestuck 2 Version 1.0

Hussie announced Homestuck 2 which would be scrapped because it was apparently so shitty that even Hussie wouldn't release it.

The Homestuck Rogue's Gallery

The lead writer of Hiveswap was hired straight off Twitter, a bisexual Jewish man whose writing is grounded in antifascism and social justice. He had zero experience beyond a Twitter following and clown jokes handed a beleaguered project. The platonic ideal of a soylennial including wrestling at conventions. He wrote for a PC only genre while never owning a functional PC. Somehow got banned from Penny Arcade

A male feminist who smashed equipment in a fit of rage from having his romantic advances rebuked

A woman who considered mocking shipping to be an example of misogyny while ranting about entitled nerdbro. The rant is in reference to Caliborn and Calliope. She got hired and was given the ability to modify canon since Hussie was fricking her sister.

The previously mentioned ipgd an egirl shotacon incest obsessed shipper was permitted to contribute to the Homestuck proper while using her fetish fanfic as a basis. One strider brother is a child while the other is an adult for context.

The infestation is so complete that the official Homestuck and Pesterquest accounts now post shit like this

Epilogue Era

2017

Homestuck Kickstarter

Hiveswap Act 1 releases to decent reviews though are incapable of generating any money, everyone who might be interested in the game had already bought it, they were still bound to release a second act so the project carries on before ending at the eight-year mark in 2020. Act 3 never.

Hussie sits upon a property that seemingly has prospects and value, unparalleled name recognition and nostalgia, but which had grown tiresome and stigmatized. Now Megalovania belonged to Undertale and so did the Homestuck style.

2018

Comic Itself

Homestuck is sold to Viz media as part of a one million dollar deal, flash reaches its twilight years which means that Homestuck needs to be converted to HTML, the conversion is noticeably shoddy which prompts fans to create the Homestuck Unofficial Project to preserve the webcomic as originally intended.

Viz Media starts to make physical Homestuck books with interesting commentary from Hussie, the absurdity of turning a uniquely digital mixed media project into a physical book isn't lost on Hussie though the books stop halfway through Act 5 due to Hussie and everyone related to him leaving Homestuck.

The Foundations of Post Canon Homestuck

Hussie, clinging to relevance, decides to authorize three projects under the Homestuck aegis with little involvement from himself. His eyes would be turned toward a new video game called Psycholonials. The three projects are Homestuck^2, Pesterquest, and Hiveswap Friendship Simulator.

Pesterquest and Hiveswap Friendship simulator are modeled after Namco High, the ironic dating sim that Hussie created in 2013 centering on the characters from Homestuck and Hiveswap respectively while being ‘friendship simulators' rather than traditional dating sims.

To connect Homestuck to Homestuck^2 Hussie launched his final foray into Homestuck with the Homestuck epilogues collaborating with those set to continue the Homestuck legacy. The epilogues are the grumblings of a buck broken old man pondering where his life went awry while coyly remaining aloof of accepting any responsibility or changing himself for the better. Instead, he wastes your time with the gayest shit ever put to text as the compounding issues of Homestuck finally reach a breaking point, the post canon era begins.

2019 and 2020

The Homestuck Epilogue

The Epilogues serve as an acknowledgement that Homestuck served two masters, those who were interested in the complex and esoteric plot which wound around itself and those interested in interpersonal character interactions. You would imagine that these two would be possible to square within a single story but Homestuck lost this balance as Act 6 went on and failed to ever rebalance itself to the point of creating a coy ironic division, the epilogues are split into two mutually exclusive scenarios which are both stated to be equally dubiously canon to allow people to take one, neither, or both as canon.

The epilogues epitomize the writing of the era, taking nostalgic properties and turning characters into unlikable buttholes fused with progressive politics serving to create something that nobody wanted. You would think after 8,000 pages that characters would be more likable and mature, considering that the entire theme of Homestuck is coming of age and the villain is a manchild, instead they're less likable and less mature than in the introduction.

Hussie's Orbiters

The reactions to the changes are decidedly negative and some like Optimistic Duelist(Homestuck YouTuber and writer for Homestuck^2) feel that transmisia is responsible while admitting that the Post Canon team are horrible people

Though seeing his favorite character die, representation even, made him want to an hero

Homestuck Kickstarter

Hiveswap Act 2 is finally released, the fabled Hauntswitch never materializes, and the Homestuck Kickstarter is finally a closed chapter eight years after its funding and six years after its intended release date. Act 3 never

Comic Itself

One of the few good developments of the Post Canon era was fans deciding to take matters into their own hands as to the fate of the comic, the original website presented a mangled and broken version of the comic attributable to the transition away from Flash and to zero work being done as to preserve the time sensitive elements of the comic. The Homestuck Unofficial Project rectified this through emulating flash and bringing back time sensitive elements to emulate how the comic was originally presented as closely as possible.

2021 and Beyond

Post Hussie Homestuck

Comic Post Canon

Homestuck formally passes from Hussie's hands to Viz Media and is whored out to Hussie's crew, hand-selected over the years to produce continuations.

Homestuck^2 served as a sequel produced without Hussie's involvement, funded through Patreon donations, while Pesterquest was a social sim which doubled as bizarre fetish fanfiction by Hussie's gaggle of degenerates. The important elements were the retconning of canon to service the new masters which had been selected for progressive politics. If you're familiar with any fandom property during the twilight of the 2010s and dawn of the 2020's then the specifics of these retcons are to be expected. As expected, the people dictating these changes are on twitter and refuse to take any criticism with grace, going on long tirades calling any distaste of the changes motivated by bigotry.

Post Canon Changes

Vriska is made trans, specifically a non passing trans woman and always was.

John Egbert, the central character, a nerdy little neurodivergent which struggled with women was groomed into a real trans woman. This was done through a contest conducted on twitter through a real life tombolorone hunt.

Roxy is now a trans man

Jade has a dog peepee and had a furry child named Yiffy

Terezi is overweight now

The New (Red) Guard

These decisions were made by people like a communist hon called Kate Mitchell who claims to have radicalized Hussie into being a gender queer commie, self inserting as Vriska.

Retconning canon constantly while being belligerent to any objections. This trans communist was banned from /r/communism as well as reposting children's artwork without credit.

Posts memes like this about being the only true revolutionary

Accused of grooming a minor and selling nudes that will give PTSD, especially when minors get them

Ran for office and lost to a corpse

Worked on an Overwatch franchise team as an assistant general manager for the Washington Justice, threatening to g*mergate people

Kate's enforcer on twitter is Dani Lalonders

Complaining about chuds and that there aren't enough black people in Homestuck

Central figure in G*mergate 2(Sweet Baby)

When all people want is the thing they paid for, obviously she's unsympathetic due to her running the ValiDate kickstarter scam

Hon solidarity called into the void and summoned another creatura from the dark, a hon named Sarah Zedig

Watch this video until you tap out

Obviously annoying on Twitter

Naturally this person was hired onto the team without a day of experience

Hussie's Orbiters

Hussie would intervene to try to shut down any criticism of those involved, Kate was banned from the Homestuck subreddit for being a belligerent butthole, accuse the mods of running a cp ring, then Hussie would intervene with the reasonable suggestion to just hand the subreddit to Kate.

TLDR

Juicy Cuts

Hussie

The mods

Hussie just demands the subreddit to decide later how to democratically decide on new leadership

Hussie pulls the trans card

People weren't happy about this

Hussie's Post Homestuck Antics

All this failure is noted by popular Tumblr historian and video essayist Sarah Z, releasing a slightly critical video, talking about the history of Homestuck with a decent degree of reverence due to its importance to Tumblr culture and to Sarah Z target audience, Zoomer and Millennial women. Every criticism comes with an accompanying affirmation.

To which Hussie sends a legal cease and desist without having watched the video, even light criticism related to his bad business practices was beyond the pale for Hussie. He attempts to come across as cool and aloof, speaking with a condescending tone, which comes across as desperate and pathetic. He demands that she follow the official line, crosschecking information with him and having his information override any of her sources. Sarah Z responded by releasing Hussie's pathetic email chain

He attempts to hide behind his typical eboy irony while threatening real legal action without any basis. Also Sarah is literally killing trans people by criticizing a trans person for misconduct.

Hussie himself went on to a new project as he formally left Homestuck, Psycholonials, promising a spiritual successor to Homestuck which would tackle contemporary politics. The visual novel serves as an indulgent and emo political manifesto for a personal brand of anarchist politics with a fixation on the revolutionary nature of clowns. A self celebratory dramatization about how Hussie fricked up all the money for the hiveswap kickstarter, ran away from his work, came back for patreon money, just to slip right back into his ironic eboy clown persona to absolve himself from responsibility. He also admits that he deliberately didn't credit someone for retaliation for bad mouthing him.

It releases in episodes to little fanfare alongside a proclamation that Hussie is now clown gender, this appears like an ironic statement until Hussie decides to announce that he's nonbinary and starts to ‘ironically' dress like a clown and eboy on Twitter. Hussie is now reborn and redeemed of his sin through the assumption of a trans identity with it/they pronouns.

He has an incredibly public and pathetic mid life crisis for all to see.

His final bid was to distance himself from Homestuck and to save America as an influencer

The story presents a modern path to revolution in which the catalyst for the overthrow of an imperialist system is not the military strongmen of old, but a young woman with social media savvy. The figure of revolution in the eyes of Hussie's story is in fact, an influencer.

https://www.polygon.com/features/22674181/andrew-hussie-interview-homestuck-psycholonials

Tragically this wasn't a winning strategy

End of an Unwanted Era

Homestuck^2 was too smart to succeed

Even after they struggle sessioned Hussie

Because the evil fascists killed the project

Homestuck^2 failed to the point of killing the company contracted, Snake Solutions, though the real impetus of Homestuck^2 was to keep the barge afloat. This meant financial schemes to defraud the remaining passionate out of any cash while exploiting fan labor. Naturally, as you might have expected, Hussie threw these people into the garbage, giving them an impossible project to make up for financial gaps left by Hussie's mismanagement as Hussie moved on to his r-slurred clown game. It was basically a scam

Hussie 'returned' to Homestuck with James Roach, a Hiveswap composer, to reopen the patreon for Homestuck^2 now retitled Homestuck: Beyond Canon to avoid the stigma. The fabled Hiveswap Act 3 and Homestuck^2 is

Even Daji Falls

ipgd for her part returned to the void from whence she came, vanishing into the Aether after one final sperg out for old times sake

Who could have predicted this

When Homestuck was at its peak, a single man called Bill Bolin, someone who did music for Homestuck, often nonconsensually, and worked with Hussie called the ending before the climax. In 2010 he talked about how Hussie was equal parts incompetent and abusive to those below him, having the organizational skills of a child and the ego of a diva. All the previous events weren't Hussie truly changing into an abusive r-slurred dictator obsessed with opacity, that what he always was. In the end, Bill Bolin was right.

Ariana, 31, Corpus Christi TX

Personal Life/Career:

• Personal Shopper at "Major Texas Grocery Store" (HEB)

  • basically just handling curbside pickup stuff

  • Last year made $25'386

    • Brought in $1'400 dollars last month?

    • Probably closer to $15'000

  • 34 hours a week - usually less than that

  • 3 years

  • Was an English teacher in China prior to this

    • Tried to substitute but did not like the culture in usa

  • Got a raise to $18 an hour recently

• Bachelor's in Poli Sci

• Leeching off her mother

  • Mother is 58

• Went back to school, stenography "to become a court reporter" timestamp

  • Pushback on this because Caleb thinks it will be vaporized by ChatGPT

  • Apparently this pays 6 figures starting?

    • Caleb fact checks this as around 61'000 starting

    • She was basing it off a job posting she saw

  • School details timestamp

    • 2 years (she thinks)

    • Paid in cash, 1 class a semester $500 each ("per speed level")

• She tries to explain what she does with her day timestamp

  • Caleb brings up the Uhaul lesbian meme

Financials:

• Financial score timestamp

  • Tries to give story, gets cut off and then says 3/10

• How'd she get into debt? timestamp

  • Claims majority of it is "taking a lot of flights to Britain"

  • "Trying to save [her] relationship"

  • Wifed an Englishwoman she met in China, separated during pandemic because they went back to their countries

    • Only 3 flights?

    • First time she stayed there 6 months

    • Others were 2 weeks apiece

    • Last went May of last year

    • Divorcing now (just filed)

    • Brit developed "chronic illness" and decided leeching off the NHS was smarter than moving to USA

    • Got married in Corpus last year, she traveled to the USA

• Credit Card 1 (Sam's) ($5'859/$14'900) timestamp

  • Went and bought a pizza at Sam's before coming to the show

    • Gets pressed on blowing money on the pizza

  • $100 interest

    • 20%

  • $158 payments (old minimum)

  • $130 new purchases

  • 159 minimum monthly payment

  • Lots of eating out

  • Tries to justify it because it's convenience

    • usually grabs it when she's on the way out of Sam's

  • Pulls out her stenography machine and she tries to transcribe what he's saying timestamp

    • She's barely 30 wpm. Unfricking real.

• Credit Card 2 (Discover It) ($1'235) timestamp

  • $625 paid

  • $424 in new purchases

  • $35 minimum payment

  • Interest free until November - 30% after that

  • She claims balances are because of relationship? He pushes back because it's obviously not

  • Constant super market spending

    • Every shift at HEB she gets Sushi (actually spring rolls)

    • Has tried making spring rolls at home but fails ever time

    • Roughly $300 a month spring roll habit. She claims she stopped and gets pressed on that because it's obviously not true

  • $75 therapist payment - put on this card instead of debit but this is interest free

• Credit Card 3 ($0) timestamp

  • Authorized user on this one, it's her mother's

  • Mother is responsible, pays it off

  • "Mother wanted to help her build credit"

  • 690 or so credit score, she thinks this is "really good"

    • Gets pressed for being constantly being confidently incorrect

• Student Loans ($9'244) timestamp - timestamp 2

  • On a payment plan - all consolidated

  • Not paused because she's under the requisite credit hours

  • Mother paid for most of her degree, these student loans are making up the difference

  • $98 minimum payment, she thought it was $198

  • 6.5% intrest rates

• Addressing the mother situation timestamp

  • Thinks she's been given $3'000 over the last three years

    • Some for dental she "broke her teeth" while eating at Wingstop

    • Then had to get root canal?

    • Informal on the payment plan, mother is keeping an notebook and writing down all numbers

  • Living with mother right now, free rent

    • Sister also lives there, also going through divorce

• Car 2014 Chevy Spark

  • 96'000 miles

• Checking Account ($25) timestamp

  • She takes out "mostly everything in cash"

    • All that spending is untracked

    • Caleb presses her hard on where the cash goes and she struggles to come up with answers

  • $80 on getting her hair done once a week

    • She wants to be "platinum blonde" instead of black hair

    • She wants this to be in her budget

  • Started the month with $600

  • Tries to get her to draw a bar chart comparing her spring roll spending vs her income timestamp

• No retirement account

Budget Pie Chart timestamp

Attempt to design her a budget timestamp

• At least $57 underwater based on what she's done

"I recently visited Menlyn Park mall in Pretoria specifically for the weFix store. While waiting I did some browsing and noticed the sheer number of cellphone shops. It's like they're built from a kit that includes: a selection of ugly phone cases, garbage Bluetooth speakers, fluorescent lighting, and a South Asian shopkeeper who stands outside the shop. In one aisle there were three of these shops: two next to each other and one opposite them -- all with the shopkeepers standing outside by the doors.

There are at least two cellphone shops in Cresta and that's not counting the stalls in the middle of aisles.

The thing is, I never see customers in these shops. How can they afford to rent space in malls like Cresta and Menlyn with barely anybody going in to buy a cheap phone case? Or is rent in a mall really that low and people actually do buy a lot of phone accessories?"

This is a common sight you guys will be able to see in any Safrican mall big enough, filled with chinese crap and useless electronic devices like chargers and adaptors and stuff which ironically aren't cheap for knock-off bullshit brands and instead just feels like the Chink or paki are already stealing your shit out of your pocket, just for you being foolish enough to have crossed the Threshold of the store or kiosk.

You can make a mental note of the inventory, come back two years and fricking see the exact same merchandise inplace on the same spot. So the frickers are never moving any real volume of inventory for sale, so how the frick they are making a living remains a mystery?

The only reason you would be r-slurred enough to enter their shops is to emergency buy an adaptor or charger for you phone which died, and the official Vodacom or MTN shop is closed or half a city away- and even then you'd be wise enough to expect that shit to fail within the next 6 months.

I make a distinction between pakis and Indians here in SA, because ironically enough in SA indians tend to be Lower to middle class, even the muslim ones, and tend to hold well regarded stores, like fabric factories or factory cutlery stores, and they import their stuff directly from India. Indian spice merchants are very VERY popular as Bongs and Boers use that shit in their Braais

Point is Indians tend to be the favorable ethnicity to do business with, in the corporate world, because they have the association and steriotype of serious businessmen in the country, whereas Pakis and Chinamen have all of the negative associations of scamartists and swindlers.

These are of course vast generalizations, and dont apply to everyone.

But these paki/chinamen shops are regarded as shitbox labs or money laundering operations, as fricking nobody knows how in God's earth they make money?? The only Chinamen shops most people really trust is sushi shops!

today even the redditors are calling out the dodgy bastards

"Funny the layman on the street is able to identify businesses that have no business but SARS and law enforcement can't. Unless..."

ONLY MAYOS GET TAXED B-WORD

lots of conspiracy theories!

DRAMATARDS! Do you has these freaks in ur country?!

Casey, 27, Beaver OK

Career:

• Works at a grocery store

  • $20.75 an hour. 40-43

  • Around $43000 yearly

• Doordash/Walmart Spark on the side

  • Is setting some money aside

  • around $500 a week

  • 30-40 hours a week

• Dad lives with him, on SSI, the father pays utilities

• Does not speak with dad much, "not a great relationship"

• "I'm content working for the store forever"

Financials:

• Pulled some credit timestamp

  • $2000

  • $400

• "I don't keep track of much other than debt payments"

• "I just keep track of the minimums nothing else"

• Ex-girlfriend stories

  • Section 1 timestamp

    • Threatened self-harm frequently

    • "I kind of played into it for a while maxed out 4 or 5 cards, took out loans to pay them off and then built them back up again"

    • Married 6 months after meeting, separated in April 2022

    • Got everything back in the divorce

    • Has not sold the car he bought her yet

  • Section 2 timestamp

    • No kids - "We have to do things to make kids that never happened"

  • Section 3 timestamp

    • Value of things from wife

      • iPhone, Apple Watch, Car, main things. Charger is the only thing he still has.

• Self-rated 0/10

• Credit Card 1 (Capital One) ($302/$300) timestamp

  • Spent 55 on it

  • Paid 25 minimum onto it

  • $6.86 interest accrued

  • Thought he would pay it off last month but just "didn't get to that" because he didn't have money left over?

  • Transactions include 2 car washes

• Credit Card 2 (Destiny) ($646) timestamp

  • Charges a monthly fee $12.50

  • Did not realize he could close a card with a balance on it

  • $45 minimum payment

  • $19.64 interest accrued

  • 35.9% interest rate

  • Spent a year after the divorce not caring

    • Running cards up

    • Affirming everything

    • Lots of energy drinks at convenience stores

• Credit Card 3 (Milestone) ($646) timestamp

  • 35.9% interest rate

  • 45 minimum payment

  • $22 monthly fee

• OneMaiden Financial ($14107, actually $7000 but includes interest) timestamp

  • Loan to pay off another loan that had a 108% loan and the line of credit he pulled $400?

  • 31.5%

  • "pre-computed loan"

  • Brand new, only made 1 payment

• Upstart timestamp

  • From paying off cards with his ex, 2021

  • 27% interest

  • Didn't catch a balance or payment on this one

• Upstart ($914) timestamp

  • 31.2% interest

  • $46 minimum payment

• Car Loan (Carvana) timestamp

  • 2019 Hyundai Ioniq Hybrid

  • Got it because it was available with no down-payments

  • Got this in January

  • 72 month term

  • 22% interest rate, he's not sure

• Credit Card 4 (First National) (568/600) timestamp

  • $30 minimum payment

  • 30% interest rate

• Credit Card 5 (Credit One) ($814/$800) timestamp

  • $70 minimum payment

  • Missed a payment twice on this one

  • Fell asleep and missed 5pm payment deadline?

  • $16 interest accrued

  • $75 fees

  • Annual fee on this one

• Loan (19'000) (Dodge Charger) timestamp

  • $513 minimum payment

  • His ex cajoled him into getting this one

  • Host rants about Chargers

  • Broken down in his driveway

  • Oil filter assembly on top of the assembly broke

    • he tried fixing it himself and broke more things

• Credit Card 6 ($510) timestamp

  • $46 minimum

  • $12.85 interest

  • 25 fees (missed payment)

  • 30% interest

• Car (2016 Hyundai Sonata) timestamp

  • 5 year loan

  • got in 2018

  • Didn't catch a number on this

  • refinanced from 19% to 9.6%, "that's one of the best [rates] I've got"

  • Broken down, car port got a wall sitting on it? He shows a picture

  • Mystery engine issues

  • Worth maybe 2'000

• Home ($47'000) timestamp

  • Escrow Balance $1'307

  • 4.5% interest rate

  • "Fixer upper but quite a lot of land to it"

  • Thinks it's worth 100'000

• Affirm (450)

• Spending timestamp

  • Tons of fast food and convenience store purchases

• Investing timestamp

  • $4'700 in an IRA

Debts:

• $113'000 total debt

Pie Chart of current spending/debts timestamp

not only does it convert back losslessly it also has the noise removed

— moderate rock (@lookoutitsbbear) May 27, 2024

!engineering

I am not an electrical or comp sci engineer but I have had some experience on the electrical side of things lately and have started becoming familiar with signal processing, so bear with me for minor mistakes if you are one of the nerds familiar with it. For those of you who are too or not deep enough on the spectrum to understand signal processing, all you need to know is this: noise is not data. It is never data. A good signals engineer must attempt to minimize noise as much as possible.

Neuralink put out some request recently asking for some insane level of compression on a file (wanting 200x compression) with a transmitted signal, and that this must be lossless (meaning the original file data can be perfectly recovered from the compressed file data). Neurodivergents online immediately set out working on this to determine what the max amount of compression is. Enter our king and hero, moderate rock (user @ lookoutitsbbear).

MR states that so far he's found a way to compress the initial data file by a factor of 4.1, the most seen so far.

Curious as to how, people start asking how well this actually works.

https://x.com/lookoutitsbbear/status/1794962035714785570

And this is where all heck breaks loose. See, Neuralink had technically asked for the original file to be compressed without any data lost. To the average midwit and/or software engineer, this means taking the original file and just making it smaller. But MR did what any good signal engineer would do, and worked on filtering the signal to get rid of unwanted and unnecessary information (the noise) so that he could do a better job of compressing the data. Midwits do not understand that noise is not relevant for a signal's information. And because of this, MR has sinned and for this, he must be dunked on. So the beatings commence.

"Heh kid, just google it. You idiot. You moron."

There are multiple midwits continuing to repeat the "noise is data" line, as though repeating it makes it true.

Once again, noise is not a relevant part of a signal.

The midwit bonanza continues, once again acting as though if noise is an important part of a signal.

Quote tweets even gain major traction dunking on him even though they're all wrong.

MR makes a quote tweet that at least gains traction with people who understand him, and the semantics argument becomes a bit more present.

Yes, on a technical level it is not lossless, as MR removed "information." But the "information" he removed is not relevant. The original signal present in the original file is recoverable after the compression. So he has done it correctly. MR also points out that the Neuralink engineers are being stupid because they should be working on getting rid of the noise before working on the compression.

Of course, the midwits can't admit they're wrong and continue to argue the semantics.

Someone who actually makes a decent enough analogy to understand what he's getting at.

There is a lot of continued insults and attempts at dunks here (too many for me to add at this point) and midwits continue try to dunk on him and he continues to shrug it off.

Adding to the hilarity, a PhD looks at the Neuralink thing and comes to the same conclusion on his own, that removing noise from the signal will help compression.

https://x.com/CJHandmer/status/1795486204185682315

https://x.com/kindgracekind/status/1795577979952845220

(some cope in the replies of this one that MR was "wrong" because of how he stated it, even though he wasn't)

Finally, our king decides to take a rest, having survived his beatings and coming out stronger

So remember dramatards: your average midwit has no clue what they're talking about, software engineers should stick to learning to code, and you should always listen to the neurodivergent savants

Basically the gist was that way back when, during the airing of the 1st season 2 years ago, when were developing between book puritans and the other shitlib wokescold tourists, who were trying to gaslamp the old guard into believing that an adaptation about a media property totally didn't need to fricking follow the lore OR the narrative OR the plot OR the background OR the fantasy rules of that universe which made slapfights even moar fiery

Well since reincarnation is such a huge theme in the Wheel of Time Books, one thematic reocurrance was that the heroes kept finding that world history kept repeating themselves with minor adjustments each reincarnation, or each "turning of the wheel" which was the in-universe character's way of referring to each earthly reset or new life.

In universe the author Jordan would lay it on thick that supposedly Wheel of Time was a magical pseudo reincarnation of modern earth, and that ancient greek myths had already repeated much of teh actions of in-universe heroes.

So as you can imagine many of the cute twink defenders of the Series show took this facet of the books as passport to defend blindly ANY amount of changes to the books, no matter how egregious or how much it deviated from the core themes of the books And when Brandon Sanderson would try to play peacemaker between the growing divide and toxicity in the fandom, by referring to the Series as another turning of the wheel, that was only like adding fuel to the fire!

"I'm not sure if I imagined it or if he actually said it but I believe Sanderson said this isn't the turning of the Wheel we read in the books, but a different turning. Watching the series with that in mind, as though this is the turning after the books and the Dark One is trying things differently makes the series friggin incredible."

"Every change seems purposeful in it's contrast to the books, leaving my jaw dropped and wondering "No...nononono...that wasn't supposed to happen. WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN NOW?!?""

The replies are less than favorable:

"This would make sense except for the fact that all of the characters have the same names/lives. The books don't seem to imply that that would ever be the case. Unless you're saying that the wheel weaves infinitely, so eventually the same exact people would be weaved again… idk it's weird"

"My problem is that I didn't want to watch another turning of the wheel. I wanted to see the turning that Jordan wrote about. I wanted to see Robert Jordan's books come to life on screen."

"t's needed because of how disparate the two versions are. Wheel of Time fans were and are shocked by how different this "adaption" is, especially considering the adaption's created for series we consider to be on the same level as Wheel of Time. Namely LoTR and GoT. Both of those adaption are considered to be a masterclass in adaption and cinema (until GoT ran out of source material). They are extremely faithful in their recreations and pull as many scenes directly from the source as possible, while cutting scenes to shorten the story for film, and in rare occasion adding newly created scenes that fill in the gaps left by cut scenes, but in a truncated manner."

"This is a perfectly valid and extremely common form of adaptation, though, which is why the "another turning of the Wheel" thing is completely unnecessary in the first place IMO. Like, do fans of King's The Shining need in-universe terminology to be able to appreciate Kubrick's film? I've never seen such a thing prior to this."

"The difference is that Kubrick's film stands on its own, with well executed changes and Jack Nicholson, while WoT practically needs a watchers guide to be able to follow what's going on or understand what people are saying. This confuses non book readers while book readers are left frustrated by the poorly executed changes."

"As much as I respect and admire Brandon Sanderson, this is absolutely not a different turning of the wheel. It's not even a portal stone world, and here's why. The One Power works differently in the Wheel of Time show, and if there is one thing that is constant in every turning, in every portal stone world, other than the Creator and the Dark One that is, it's the One Power. The One Power does not change. That is why this is not a different turning of the wheel, it's just really bad fan fiction, if the people making this show can even be called fans. I'm not sure they actually are."

"What has changed about the one power?"

"A lot. To name a few thus far...

Morraine was not able to sense Nynaeve's ability to channel. Her healing everyone in that camp came as a surprise to her. For that matter...her aoe healing and not touching them to do it is also a change.

At the battle of Tarwin's Gap there are a couple of differences showcased. For one, a channeler cannot be burned out through linking. Also, three women to weak to become Aes Sedai and two who have not even begun to train would not have been able to destroy an army like that. Women's power level grows the longer they have been channeling and the more training they receive. Which, going back to a previous point, Nynaeve should not have even been capable of a burst of power of that magnitude when she aoe healed those people. [GIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRLBOSS MONENT]

The show definitely seems to be going for eliminating the differences between male and female in regards to the One Power, as shown when Morraine indicates that the reason she can't teach Rand about channeling has nothing to do with the gender differences. I can't quite recall the reason she states but I remember it being different. There are other differences but those ones are pretty big."

"just so you know, the community on this sub is actively hostile to this show, even with that framing. If you want to have discussions about it that don't devolve into circular rants about how trash it is, I'd go to /r/WoT or /r/WoTshow."

"It's not the entire community, it's a lunatic fringe that goes out of their way to make the show unfun to talk about so they can circlejerk in peace, and I'm starting to think "Ban them on site" is the prudent course of action."

"Where would you draw the line? Ban anyone who doesn't like the show?"

"Don't tempt me. I just want the brigade / circlejerk to stop, and I've reached out to the Admins for options."

"Have you considered auto-banning users that participate in the hate subs? This sub chose not to use this action against whitecloaks and I think that was a mistake."

The /r/whitecloaks was the giga-chuds spazzing the frick out about all the blackwashing and race-bending and would no nuclear when there were so many black peeps. Not even just pissed that the diversity undermined the themes of later in the books, they just didn't nogs in the show lmoa

And so many were banned and created their own sub - the /r/whitecloaks which hilariously is the most hated faction in the game as they are a parody of religious fanatics who burn alive all witcher and mages in the books, but are overall extremely inept due to their fanaticism, not because they don't have spectacular martial prowess, but because in their zealotry they target all the goodguy mages, giving all the badguys massive leeways and headstarts for their evil plans. They are basically an r-slured spanish inquisition.....so basically the inquisition

Thus the chuds who made /r/whitecloaks are really so on the nose they might be zits.

"I feel like you had a lot of rats fleeing the Whitecloaks ship when that sub got nuked, and a lot of them ended up here…"

"r/whitecloaks. /r/whitecloakstoo. /r/wot4all, just to name three. The list goes on, because they either just don't understand that no one else wants them around while they're acting like this, or they don't care"

The eternal chud banned from over 130 subreddits.....

CONTEXT!

Modern Yugioh cardgame is a shitshow and imbalanced to such a degree that that every concurrent generation of cards overpowers the previous generation so decisively that even playing with 5 year old cards is completely unviable in non-casual settings, both in person and online games.

Unlike card games like Hearthstone or Pokemon or Magic the Wokening, there isn't a resource or mana system, which hard-caps and limits the amount of stuff you can do per turn.

If you fulfil the requirements on the Yu-gi-oh card text, then you have the ability to activate that card immediately at no special cost other than the card itself, which means that Yugioh has the capacity to activate an almost theoretical infinite amount of cards per turn,

capped only by certain ingame hardcoded rules such as the limitation of only being able to perform one normal summon of a monster per turn, having your monster or magic zones be finite and so on.

Because of this unique aberration from other cardgames in the world, Yu-gi-oh has developed a multitude of decks which abuse the various mechanics of the game to do really wacky shit, like deck themselves out and burning all of the opponent's 8000 life points all within the FIRST TURN, before they even have a chance to react!

The turbo neurodivergents have studied the blade I mean studied the over 15 000 cards existing in the game and have created combinations and configurations of the game so batshit insane over the years, that the level of play has become an impossible barrier of entry for newcomers and even old Yigioh boomers of yesteryear, who will find to their dismay their old deck of 2005 which kicked butt in Highschool will get OTK's - namely One-Turn-Killed - as easily taking candy from a baby and raping the mother.

The powerscaling is just that perverse, and the commonality of seeing players shit out half of their deck onto the field in one turn, with combinations making turns LITERALLY WITHOUT EXAGERATION more than 10 minutes is grotesquely common, at least in any competitive.

In 2010 games would take average 15-20 turns, now they barely last 3-4 turns, as the right combination or absence of your key cards in your hands can fricking decide the game in the first turn - not joking.

TLDR: go play Pokemon or Magic the Wokening instead.

Compared to other more balanced games like Magic the Wokening, which has various powerscaling formats which permits only certain card types and from certain eras, like the famous Commander format, Yugioh doesn't have an equivalent system.

Some differences between Yugioh and Magic the Wokening videos:

Some fun videos where Yugioh players try to guess what Magic cards are good/bad and vice versa:

Oh and the biggest complaints of the Magic card player is that the fricking Yugioh cards are all novels with tiny text!!

Now Yugioh does actually have a really fun entry level format called Speed Dual! Which is a fantastic and (mostly) balanced format which explcitly calls back to the original series with nostalgia and special duelist cards to activate powerful bonus abilities! All the most powerful cards are excluded and only creative spells and traps are included which kept the format very fun and easy to understand.

The only problem?? Fricking KONAMI, the owners of Yugishit, DOESN'T FRICKING ADVERTISE THE GAME meaning only a smaaaaaaaal minority of peeps are aware of Speed Dual (named explicitly so to make the game faster and easier to learn)

KONAMI's wall of silence is painful when it comes to communicating with the playerbase.

Few gaymestores evenfricking sell Speed Dual products, so peeps don't ever play it.....

Meaning that for the majority of there is basically only one practical format: competitive and casual. Meaning you get r*ped by anyone with even a basic modern Structure deck bough out of the box VS your casual 2015 deck,

or you get baby's 1st vagin@ adventures with its own imbalance issues.

And to to demonstrate how r-slurred KONAMI is in regulating its fanbase, Magic the Wokening has demonstarted it CAN have various powerscaling formats for different eras and so on.

Additionally players have done their own personal formats, where they state only cards before a certain period like 2014 can be used, or create their own special dedicated format like the most famous GOAT-format.

https://www.goatformat.com/

with specific cards banned to create the minimal balance and so on.

Unfortunately these often only work in large dedicated GameShops or boardgame-centers in big cities, and often only in 1st World countries, where a big enough group of people congregate to make the record-keeping of which cards are appropriate for the new experimental format worth it if enough people willingly participate by limiting themselves to cards of previous generations and a local banning-list of problem cards.

As you guys can imagine this completely blocks new people from enjoying the game. Even as far back as 2012, Yugioh players had complained about the new Card-mechanics beco ming more difficult and overpowered.

Now the core of Yugioh revolves around its monsters, and every generation KONAMI would introduce a cool new more powerful summoning mechanic. Now the previous generations of summoning monsters onto your field were quirky but not always optimal and overpowered. But they still increased with power and ease of summoning with each concurrent generation.

The breaking point for many peeps who would become Yugioh boomers, were the introduction of Pendulum Monsters which enabled the summoning of 5 fricking monsters easily in one turn! Additionally this mechanic was very very complex compared to previous monster types, and required actually dueling to understand how WTF they worked, compared to previous monster types which were easily understood when explaining to your friends the game for the 1st time, and from this era on Yugioh would positively bleed newcomers, and the playerbase perpetually divided into experienced players and noobs bouncing off

Now these new powerful Pendulums did have limitations, but even if the Pendulums were restricted, it heralded an era where the game became faster and faster and faster rapidly. It meant that previous generations of monsters which were considered balanced, like the XYZ monsters and Synchro monsters, would become more powerful and faster and easier to summon to fricking keep up with the fricking Pendulums, which further alienated older players which preferred a slower playing style and format.

A lot of people aware of Yugioh exclaim that it was Link-monsters which ruined yugioh into a speeddemon format where autismos shat out half their decks at the speed of greased lightning, all in one turn, which ruined the game.

But it's my personal opinion that Pendulums started the downward spiral from 2013- onwards. 2014 was basically the last time I could keep up and also my university studies became to sternuous to keep up with this new Link shit.

In the online scene the newest Yugitard gayme is called Dualmasters

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1449850/YuGiOh_Master_Duel/

And it fricking sux! The metagame was fun in the 1st year, but like most online multiplayer games, it eventually developed an overpowering Meta against newcomers. Released in 2022, it's now 2 years old and various habits have been developing between plays, and has caused slapfights in yugitard forums over what behaviour is acceptable.

The crux of the slapfight is that people are quitting or surrendering the game more frequent than ever, which is causing annoyance. Yet the nature of modern Yugioh is that power decks and strategies mean that you will sit like a cuck while your opponent builds an unbreakable board, which you have no chance of a snowball in heck of breaking,

Making going 1st perpetually more powerful in the game. Casuals hate this state of the game and tryhards hate the pre-emptive quitting epidemic.

Which brings us to the story of today: Popular Yugituber TeamAPS constantly shares his opinion on various topics in the game and is often met with positive feedback.

But not today!!! This has got to be the most controversial video of TeamAPS or any other yugituber video in memory. And the yugioh community is generally family friendly and non-toxic despite all the fights vs Yugi-Boomers and veteran pro-players, so this video is especially an aberration of controversy!

Now Paul the Yugituber understandably doesn't like his games interrupted and having to go back to online matchmaking, only for half your games being interrupted by the opponent just fricking off midgame,

BUT ON THE OTHER HAND so many peeps are just sick of the literal, LITERAL 10 minute turns opponents take to decimate their opponents.

"I could literally get up, make myself a sandwich and get a bottle of water while I'm waiting for them to finish their 15 minute turn and still wonder why haven't I just surrendered at this point."

Many people, including avid veteran Yugioh players are pretty upset of the state of the game, or at least the state of the Meta and format of the Online Duelmaster videogame.

And I say veteran yugioh players, because you have to be a literal neurodivergent to fricking watch a guy on Youtube ramble on about a Childern's Trading Card Game

They complain that KONAMI takes little action compared to other companies to break this late-stage stagnation as they view it.

"Maybe yugioh shouldn't be a game where people feel like they want to surrender on turn 1"

"The fact that people want to surrender so much in the first place is fundamental proof that Yu-Gi-Oh! is a broken game."

"One step away from Solitaire"

"it already is bruh, the only reason people don't is because those sweaty butt nerds want someone to watch them play with themselves for 20min "

Lmoa. In CounterStrike we blame lag, in Yugioh we blame scripted bots

Virgin sitting like a cuck for 15 minutes waiting to lose, VS Chad pulling out the fricking ethernet cord lmoa

"I love how this whole comment section is mostly in disagreement. Sorry Paul, you're not winning this one." (Paul is the Yutiber)

And that's the problem, Paul is a literal 20 year veteran of the game and has large insight and experience into the mechanics and meta of the game, how to get rid of problem cards, and how to build your deck in preparation for dangerous opponents.

Casual players and even veterans like me, who DON'T keep up with the latest week by week meta get our bussies abssolutely sandblasted if we are even 1 year of meta out of date. The extreme speed and nature of the game has raised the ceiling of difficulty to painful and unfun levels for those even attempting more fun casual decks and strategies.

This divorces the playerbase into the sweaty tryhards and more casuals, or even lukewarm veterans who return to yugioh to constantly find the gamestate unrecognizable.

So what ends up happening is people just instantly surrender when they find their opponents playing the latest hardcore Meta deck monsters, often 3 times in a row if they have to, until they find a more clear casual rogue deck. This has become a frequent happening,

especially in the 2nd year of Masterdual Videogame as the gaymer playerbase became more and more experience and the difficulty ceiling raise in response. I have a friend who player Rainbow 6 and states that in the 1st year where nobody knew what the frick they were doing ,and consequently experiented with diverse and fun strategies, but by the 2nd year as the playerbase matured and the optimal meta was discovered, the game became monotone and stale.

"As long as the one-turn-win is the meta, no, I will not stop surrendering. I like PLAYING the game, Paul, not watching someone else jack off their deck for ten minutes before one-shotting me."

"That's typically my response too, if I lose because I got outmaneuvered then GG take the win. But if I have no options to defend and you're still throwing combos out when you already have the win, then screw you I'm out."

In the 2012-2014 era games could on average still go on for 15-20 turns, with the tides and momentum of the match swinging constantly in the favor of the opponent if even one timely Trap was activated. In 2024 in competative yugioh, the game is so excruciatingly one sided, that games are decided in opening hands. This isn't every single game, and yugoh players can overstate the frequency of these infamous FTK (First-Turn-Kill) matches, but you need to lose only once with your full hand unplayed, to sour over the state of the game

"I couldn't agree more on this statement, if the meta is otk, then no, I won't stop surrendering when they just stroke their own ego for 15 minutes by doing bullshit combos."

"Nah I work 11 hours a day I'm not gonna waste my few free hours at home waiting for someone to stop comboing"

"I'm not wasting my time sitting through a longass combo for a "chance" to counter it. Better off just surrendering and finding a new match. I only get 1-2 hours a day to play."

"This is one of the main problems that drove me away from Yugioh. People scoop? No, it's what makes people scoop ON TURN ONE, no engine, no one card combo, no handtraps, no board breaker. How many card games that you can already tell that you already lose with first hand. You feel like I'd rather GG next game, than trying to fight and see the outcome that predictable. Blame the state of the game not people."

And so the comments and complaints go on and on. You guys get the idea.

The bitching and slapfights in the comments are few, and most are throwing tantrums about how modern Yugioh sux, and how KONAMI doesn't do nay effort to promote lower tier formats, and how they are going to continue surrendering because they belong to the sore loser club!

@Losercel

Aldous Huxley was born in Godalming, Surrey, England in 1894. According to Nicholas Murray, Huxley was “immensely tall – six feet four-and-a-half inches”, and he had a voice that was “beautifully modulated, silvery, precise”. His mother, Julia Huxley, died “of an inoperable cancer after a very short illness” in 1908. This greatly impacted Huxley, and Murray claims that the pain of the loss is apparent in Huxley's literature. As evidence, he argues that “in both Brave New World and its counterpart, the ‘good utopia' of Island, the nature of motherhood and the role of the family is an important theme, and one informed by Huxley's complicated feelings about the matter reaching back to his childhood experiences”.

Huxley would not avoid health problems of his own. His school attendance was not consistent because he “was ill as a child and missed some of his lessons”. When Huxley was sixteen and attending Eton College, he began experiencing pain in his eyes and he was taken to an eye specialist in London. It was determined that he had a condition known as keratitis punctata, and although doctors did their best, he was left blind from 1911 to 1912, and his sight was impaired from then onwards. His sight impairment was devastating because he was “a voracious reader, a painter, a delighted explorer of the natural world” and, according to Murray, “it was a catastrophe which he always believed was the most important single determining event in his early life”. Interestingly, George Woodcock notes that Huxley's seeing impairment was accompanied by aphantasia, and he “could remember scenes, but he could not create a scene by invention in his mind's eye”. Huxley writes about his experiences with near blindness in The Art of Seeing (1943).His sight problems may have been unexpectedly serendipitous because “realising that a medical or scientific career was now out of the question, Huxley turned to the idea of writing”. He read voraciously using braille and a magnifying glass, and he also learnt to play the piano by touch. His loss of sight may have also sparked his search for alternate ways to view the world, ultimately fuelling and shaping his views and interactions with psychedelics. When he was seventeen, he published his first text titled Crome Yellow in 1921. One of his most impactful texts is Brave New World (1932), a dystopian text that imagines a future where society is bioengineered and conditioned with the aim of crafting a perfect utopia.

In 1937, Huxley and his family moved to California, USA. During this time, there are “oriental elements that became increasingly preponderant in his religious attitudes”, and this is seen in writing. As Woodcock points out, in Island Huxley crafts a society with a “religio-philosophic basis combining Indian and European elements”. In the 1950s, Huxley began experimenting with psychedelic drugs. He “had heard, since coming to the United States, circumstantial reports of the use of the cactus known as peyote in the ceremonials of a semi-pagan Indian church in New Mexico”. While some view psychedelics as a psychosis simulator and others view them as recreational substances, Huxley instead saw them as spiritual helpers. As Woodcock explains, “he realised that the ways to enlightenment were many; that prayer and meditation in themselves were only techniques, and that there could be other techniques – mortification was one of them – which might effectively break down the resistance of the Ego”.

The doors of perception

The phrase “the doors of perception” is originally found in William Blake's text The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790). Within the text, it is written that “if the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite”. This carries a similar message to what The Doors of Perception argues with regards to psychedelics. Huxley's reference to Blake is no mistake, and he displays a constant fondness for the Romantic artist through his references to him, and titling an essay “Heaven and Hell”, making yet another allusion to Blake.

The Doors of Perception can be considered psychedelic due to the way Huxley handles the topic of drug use. The text is presented as an autobiographical account of the author's experiences, and he attempts to make himself appear as a man who is using psychedelics for the sake of science and knowledge rather than hedonism. Like psychedelic writers before him, he assumes the role of the psychonaut who aims to explore unvisited realms of human consciousness. Huxley, with his scientific tone and his philosophical musings regarding psychedelics and their social and spiritual potential, plays the role of the psychonaut quite convincingly, and his eloquence allows him to discuss even his most abstract thoughts.

Mescaline

Huxley's drug of choice is mescaline. As previously discussed, the use of mescaline is usually associated with Native Americans who have used it for generations for spiritual purposes. Huxley is aware of the relationship Native Americans have had with the drug, and he also discusses how Native Americans have appropriated customs and rituals of the past to still carry meaning in the modern world. As an example, he looks to the Native American Church which has been discussed in this thesis. Following the colonisation of the Americas, Native Americans had to deal with Christianity's encroachment on their culture. In many countries that have experienced European colonisation, Christianity often becomes the dominant religion that moulds many aspects of life including culture, morality, and law. In the process, the culture of the natives is erased. Rather than fight the overwhelming tide of Christianity, Huxley notes that some Native Americans instead did “something which is at once psychologically sound and historically respectable” and incorporated some of the fabric of Christianity into their cultural beliefs and customs. This can be seen in the way the use of peyote has been sacramentalised in a Christian fashion by the Native American Church. As Huxley explains, the church's “principal rite is a kind of Early Christian agape, or love feast, where slices of peyote take the place of bread and wine”. Hence, while Christians experience rebirth by taking part in the symbolic resurrection of Christ through communion, members of the Native American Church use mescaline instead for the same ends. The effects of mescaline are interpreted as religious and spiritual experiences and the Native Americans occasionally “see visions, which may be of Christ Himself”.

Huxley speaks positively of the Native American Church, and he lauds them for seeking “the best of both worlds, indeed of all the worlds – the best of Indianism, the best of Christianity”. However, Huxley does not spend much time using Native American worldviews to understand mescaline, nor does he use Native American myths and folktales to make sense of his psychedelic experiences. Instead, Christianity is the religion he mostly uses to frame his experiences. He makes use of Christian language and imagery, and he refers to Christian parables, including the story of Mary and Martha. This is not unexpected for Huxley, whose life in the United Kingdom and the USA would have chiefly exposed him to Christianity. His understanding of both Christian and Native American belief systems goes a long way to shedding light on the prevailing socio-religious climate in the USA during Huxley's time of writing. For instance, by highlighting the Native American Church, Huxley also brings to light the ways Native Indian belief systems in America were undermined by Christianity brought in by European settlers and how, while some Native Americans did try to form a new hybrid culture, others “reacted to white supremacy by becoming Americanised”.

Huxley treats his experiments with psychedelics as a scientific endeavour. This is seen, for example, when he introduces his experimentation with mescaline in quite a scientific manner. He uses precise language, including stating the date and exact dosage he took. In May 1953, Huxley is visited by a friend who is researching mescaline, and he allows Huxley to be his guinea pig. Huxley agrees and consumes four-tenths of a gram of mescaline dissolved in half a glass of water before patiently waiting for the effects. The objective, scientific tone of the text is further magnified by the fact that Huxley, after consuming mescaline, records his conversations on a “dictating machine”. Throughout the text, Huxley makes several scientific observations, and he posits theories on how mescaline might alter one's consciousness. He hypothesises that mescaline “interferes with the enzyme system that regulates cerebral functioning”. Consequently, it lowers the “biological efficiency of the brain” and permits the entry into consciousness “certain classes of mental events, which are normally excluded”.

One of the ways he establishes a scientific tone is by inserting himself onto the end of a long chain of prior psychonauts and scholars. He begins his research by stating that “it was in 1886 that the German pharmacologist, Louis Lewin, published the first systemic study of the cactus”, then continues by pointing out that “such eminent psychologists as Jaensch, Havelock Ellis, and Weir Mitchell began their experiments with mescalin, the active principle of peyote”. Displaying his scientific knowledge of the drug, Huxley explains that “chemists have not merely isolated the alkaloid; they have learned how to synthesize it”. He is also aware of how the drug garners interest from various fields of study including psychiatrists, philosophers, “neurologists, and physiologists”. By discussing his predecessors and outlining the body of scientific knowledge of peyote, he portrays himself as scientifically learned and positions himself as yet another psychonaut in a long line of experimenters.

Whether intentional or not, Huxley's scientific approach adds a subtle layer of humour to his text when it is applied to the most mundane of observations. A notable example of this occurs when Huxley stares at his trousers and notices “those folds in the trousers – what a labyrinth of endlessly significant complexity! And the texture of the grey flannel – how rich, how deeply, mysteriously sumptuous!”. He has a similar experience when staring at draperies, causing him to conclude that “for the mescalin taker draperies are living hieroglyphics that stand in some peculiarly expressive way for the unfathomable mystery of pure being”. What might have been a forgotten observation suddenly becomes a scientific quandary, and in an attempt to solve it, he hypothesises that perhaps “the forms of folded drapery are so strange and dramatic that they catch the eye and in this way force the miraculous fact of sheer existence upon the attention? Who knows?”.

Despite his scientific approach, he also occasionally makes use of mysticism in his writing. This is seen through his several references to religion, especially Christianity. For example, when he attempts to explain negative experiences, he compares them to Dante's Inferno, an epic poem that imagines the Christian Hell as an abyss comprised of nine circles. Huxley also juxtaposes positive and negative psychedelic experiences by referring to them as Heaven and Hell, respectively. Thus, as has been the case with his predecessors, Huxley's psychedelic writing disrupts the usual boundaries between different modes of observation and blends the scientific with the poetic. Boon's research on Huxley suggests that the intermingling of the subjective and the objective in The Doors of Perception may be a product of Huxley's life and upbringing because he “came from a background in which literary and scientific pursuits had long coexisted”.

It should be noted that while Huxley does make use of mysticism, and though he does give into trailing thoughts and subjective language when describing psychedelic experiences, he does so to a lesser degree than his fellow psychedelic writers, including Ludlow. Comparatively, Huxley is far more lucid than his predecessors, and this is seen, for example, when, during a moment of navel-gazing, he states that “by its nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies, – all these are private and, except through symbols and a second hand, incommunicable”. He suggests that while humans may attempt to socialise, the human experience is ultimately a solitary one, as our experiences can only be shared through secondary means, and tools such as language can never fully communicate one's internal experiences. His remark echoes the kind of philosophizing emblematic of psychedelic writers who are tasked with describing the most exotic internal experiences, but Huxley can put forward a coherent thought without dipping into language that is too strange and imagery that obfuscates.

Huxley and Psychedelics

Like prior psychedelic writers, Huxley displays a positive attitude towards psychedelics, and this view does not change from the start to the end of The Doors of Perception. He does not see an issue with the regular use of mescaline, and he claims that reports by Dr Slotkin reveal that peyote users are “on the whole more industrious, more temperate (many of them abstain altogether from alcohol), more peaceable than non-peyotists”. He views the drug as superior to legal substances such as alcohol and tobacco which he believes are a detriment to society. However, he does not advocate for the banning of alcohol and cigarettes, and instead, he argues that by introducing the public to psychedelics, they could “exchange their old bad habits for new and less harmful ones”. Mescaline may be the drug to do this because, as Huxley notes, “unlike alcohol, it does not drive the taker into the kind of uninhibited action which results in brawls, crimes of violence and traffic accidents”. He also stresses the harmlessness of psychedelics, and claims that “to most people, mescalin is almost completely innocuous”.

Although he sings the praises of mescaline, he is not entirely blind to its negative aspects. He notes that while mescaline is safer than most legal and illegal drugs, it is “not yet an ideal drug”. This is partially because, while many who consume mescaline will find sublime splendours and deep contemplation, there are a select few who find “in the drug only hell or purgatory". Although he presents mescaline as an alternative habit to alcohol and tobacco, he does not think that it is a perfect replacement because “for a drug that is to be used, like alcohol, for general consumption, its effects last for an inconveniently long time".

To Huxley, mescaline is a solution to a problem. He poses this problem to the reader by asking the following question: “short of being born again as a visionary, a medium, or a musical genius, how can we ever visit the worlds which, to Blake, to Swedenborg, to Johann Sebastian Bach, were home?”. To solve this problem, he hopes that mescaline will admit him “at least for a few hours, into the kind of inner world described by Blake”. Hence, in many ways, his motivations are that of the classic psychonaut, as he chiefly desires to explore anomalous states of consciousness.

To better understand Huxley's aims with mescaline, one would need to grapple with how he conceives of human consciousness. In Huxley's view, the human mind is capable of remembering everything that has ever happened to it and perceiving “everything that is happening everywhere in the universe”, a belief inspired by the Cambridge philosopher Dr C.D. Broad, who in turn is inspired by Bergson. However, much of the content consumed by the brain is “largely useless and irrelevant”. Hence, to assist humans, who are biological organisms geared towards survival, the brain, and the nervous system will shut out most of what is perceived, “leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful”. Hence, the brain and the nervous system can be thought of as a reducing valve that gives us “a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive”. Some special individuals, however, can bypass this limiting valve to perceive more than the average person. These are the creatives and the spiritually enlightened through whose eyes Huxley aspires to see, though he plans to do it through mescaline. Huxley's ideas may have some psychoanalytical basis. The previously discussed Freudian concept of repression may be thought of as a form of reality narrowing in service of the Ego. However, this narrowing can be expanded through the use of psychedelics which, as C.J. Healy's research reveals, have been noted by clinicians to unearth repressed childhood memories.

Although The Doors of Perception is a popular text, there were several criticisms of it at the time of its release. As is to be expected, many critics chastised the text for its drug-centric nature. The ethnologist Weston La Barre claimed Huxley looked upon mescaline with the “Romanticism-ensorcelled eyes of Europeans” while the Oxford professor R. C. Zachner took umbrage at Huxley comparing his drug experiences to those of great mystical traditions. Huxley did have plenty of critics who praised him, however, and he has been celebrated by psychedelic writers who have come after him. In High Priest, Leary speaks of reading Huxley repeatedly before finally meeting him and describing him as a “wise and good man”.

The Doors of Perception is a highly influential text that has gone on to affect not just psychedelic literature, but also public perceptions of psychedelics. The text drew attention to itself due to the way it presents a psychoanalytic approach to psychedelic experiences and posits psychonautics as an intellectually valuable pursuit in the West as opposed to a merely esoteric cultural trait of primitive exotic cultures or a pastime of degenerates. Huxley was also influential in inspiring others to share their own psychedelic experiences. According to Boon, the late 1950s saw a large increase of “Huxley-inspired accounts of LSD and mescaline”.

Conclusion

Wewlad that was a long one. I hope you enjoyed it. Tune in next time when I discuss Hunter S. Thompson or circumcision or some shit.

Madison, 24, Austin TX

Personal Life/Career:

• Fashion/lifestyle brand, part of "philanthropy" team

  • "Philanthropy Specialist" - "Corporate CRS"

  • 57'000

  • Thinks her income level is pretty okay

  • "I have a little debt but it's fine it's not that deep, to me"

• "Why did you come on the show?" timestamp

  • She read comments saying they wanted someone normal and she decided she could be that person

  • "I feel like I'm one of the best you've had on the show"

• "What are you looking to get out of the conversation" timestamp

  • Going on a few trips in the future, wants advice on budgeting around those and her other debts

• Doing some sidegigs? Never actually explained so I don't think she's actually started any

Financials

• 68'183 total debt

• "Why do you have all this debt?" timestamp

  • College expenses

• Self-scores a 7/10

• Credit Card 1 (Discover) ($3'600) timestamp

  • $99 minimum payment

  • $78 interest accrued, she didn't know that this was a thing

  • She's been throwing just a little above her minimum payment at all her debts?

  • Tries to explain how interest works to her with a graph timestamp

  • College card, had it paid off last year, then racked up a balance again "shopping issue"

• Credit Card 2 (Amco) (6'486) timestamp

  • 2500 credit remaining

  • 233 minimum payment

  • Last payment was less than her minimum? "Oh, I might have forgot about that"

  • How'd that get up to nearly 7'000 dollars? timestamp

    • Thinks she balance transferred it from the Discover card?

    • Mostly spendthrift behaviors

    • How much does she think she spends in a month total? timestamp

      • Thinks around 2'000 spent out a month total - actually it was $8'742

• Credit Card 3 (Care Credit) (1'647) timestamp

  • "I've almost paid it off though I feel like timestamp

  • Was 2600 last year

  • "I think that's really good"

  • Brings up dying dog spending to deflect

• Medical bill $124

  • Forgot to pay it after they sent her the bill in the mail

• He forgets her age and calls her 26 while she's defending calling herself above average timestamp

• Car (2023 Rav4) () timestamp

  • 9% rate

  • Didn't catch a total or a minimum payment for this but it started $40'000

    • Around a 700 minimum payment?

  • August 2023

  • Used to have a Buick Encore, got into a wreck so she needed a new car

    • Had gap insurance

  • She "wanted a new one"

  • "Mental math is not my strongest"

  • $193 insurance payment

• Student Loans timestamp

  • Studied Marketing at Texas A&M

  • Most around 4.5%

  • "I haven't paid really any of it, I think I've kind just paid 30 bucks maybe 60 bucks on two of them"

  • Doesn't think she's on deferment, she just isn't paying them

  • 10 year repayment plan

    • Actually she might be on income driven repayment

  • $50 minimum payment? She's past due

  • Still hoping Biden forgives it

  • Pushback on why she deserves debt forgiveness timestamp

    • Extremely wishful thinking

    • Dreams of marrying into wealth

    • Got a D in finance, Barely passed Accounting

• Personal Loan $183 timestamp

  • Took this out "a really long time ago"

    • July 2022

  • Claims not to remember what it was for

• 545 credit score

• Spending timestamp

  • lots of shopping

  • lots of eating out

  • Few Venmos out, "a lot of bacholorette trips"

  • Amazon

  • Mother and brother are broke she zelles them sometimes and they zelle her back?

  • Screen recording of her Amazon purchases timestamp

  • Venmo Transactions timestamp

• Travel plans timestamp

  • Going to Europe

  • To see Taylor Swift in London

  • around $800 on just the plane ticket

  • "Already paid for the concert so that's kinda free in my head"

• Spending Chart timestamp

  • 6% of spending went to debt

  • 21% to medical, she's not sure what this is

    • $1725 to an eye doctor timestamp

  • Mysterious 1600 expense timestamp

• Budget Chart timestamp

  • 887 rent

  • 1071 minimum payments

• Refuses to sell the car because she likes it timestamp

• "Hammer financial score, frick her"

"The Progress and Regress Pokémon are a set of custom Pokémon that I have designed to bridge RationalWiki with the Pokémon fandom, promoting the values that RationalWiki stands for and rebuking the chicanery that RationalWiki opposes." -luigifan18

I. RationalWiki

RationalWiki is the libtarded version of Conservapedia, which is the conservatarded version of Wikipedia, which is libtarded^[1][2][3]. Here's a represenative sample of their articles:

• GoDaddy - Apparently goDaddy is a hitler nazi klan organization now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

• Mall ninjas - In this brave new retelling YOU are the soyboy fedora tipper, and they are the unbothered gigachad calmly explaining the importance of common sense gun control.

• Alt-Right glossery - 280 entries long

• Wingnut welfare - Wingnut welfare is when a right-wing journ*list gets paid. Note that 100% of left-leaning journ*lists are good faith truth spreaders who do it out of love for humanity.

• Encyclopædia Dramatica - Direct assault on our forefathers

Encyclopædia Dramatica (ED) is an extremely hateful troll wiki whose stated mission is to document Internet culture, memes and "drama" for the lulz. It is also happy to document everything the userbase thinks is wrong with the Internet, but proudly does so in a style that exemplifies the very things wrong with the Internet. Unsurprisingly, it is filled with homophobic, racist, misogynistic, transphobic/enbyphobic and (perhaps most infamously of all) antisemitic content.

II. Pokémon - Progress & Regress

In this rom there are progress and regress pokemon. Each pokemon easily defeats one pokemon from the other side, and is easily defeated by another pokemon of the other side.

Here's 12 of the 23 pokemon, featuring consept "art" by me

Note: Every pokemon has types, abilities, a name origin, far too detailed move stats, and up to of 4 different theme songs (most of which are from the band Disturbed). Read some of it urself

Thread theme (Azureality's theme)

III. RationalWiki, discuss

EDIT 3: ISEF removed him from the winner's page and are revoking the 50k! Will they make any changes for next year? No one knows!

EDIT 2: His lab at USC has removed him from the lab members page

EDIT: Nice job r-slurs, you made him take his Linkedin account down.

This is starting to be picked up by the small chuddie internet personalities, so get in while it's still hot! Here's the summary. Very long so buckle up kids :

• Regeneron ISEF is this big science fair for high school nerds that's been around since the 1950s. It's considered the most prestigious science fair for high schoolers and 80+ countries participate. Winners usually get an all-expense paid trip & stay & activities (like a Universal Studios day etc) at the location which rotates every year (this year was in California). Not only is it but there's money involved! The top winner gets $75k (life changing money for poor countries like UK) and the 2 runner ups get 50k. Plus lots of special awards, prizes, etc. And the top winners are basically guaranteed to get into Harvard/MIT/Stanford.

• To get to ISEF in the US, you have to win your local state fair and get nominated to ISEF, so its pretty selective. You undergo several rounds of judging locally and then a day of judging at the ISEF itself. Judges are supposed to at minimum have a PhD or 6 years of experience in whatever category they are judging.

ruh-roh

• This year the 50k winner is this 17 yr old kid who did his project on "machine-learning research to identify microbial genetic sequences that can be modified to biodegrade plastic." Besides saving the world, he is apparently a neuroscience research fellow at USC. His dad is a wealthy Silicon Valley VC dude from India, and his older sister goes to USC studying quantitative bio

• Note that his category is "Environmental Engineering" and the competition was hosted in California this year.

• A few days after winning, a mysterious, anonymous document began to circulate in the ISEF community claiming Pai fabricated most of his project. The letter asks ISEF to investigate & fix their system for the future. Even I got sent this document from a friend, despite being a winner like 15 years ago. The document is 36 pages long and very detailed. It's worth skimming through because of how hilarious & obvious this fraud was: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e4vjzp6JgClCFXkbNOweXZnoRnGWcM6vHeglDH1DmGM/edit It regularly has 50-100 people looking at it at all times of the day.

  

• • TLDR: very obvious and extensive fraud. Kid took images of research done, mirrored them and claimed them as his own. Said he invented a rasberry pi based device and had pics of it, was invented by someone else 3 years ago and this kid just used those pics (didn't even re-make the device!). All his data is extremely sketch, some results are straight up impossible, & numbers pulled out of butt. On top of the fraud, the kid is a complete dumbass. Spelling errors everywhere, he doesn't understand basic concepts of ML/AI, and he stole half his project from the ISEF winner 3 years ago. No idea how ISEF let this through...

• At some point, a few reddit posts were made, the biggest one on /r/ApplyingToCollege. Ofc, the kid got absolutely blasted in the comments as the evidence is pretty much darning. Many parents chimed in saying they were pissed (understandably) bc their little einstein worked so hard and got fricked. Being Reddit, it is likely that this is when the Open Letter started getting sent to internet personalities, schools' admissions offices, Society4Science, the kid's school in California, etc

Reddit link (note 50% deleted, we'll get to that in a bit):

Archive (couldn't find one that had the original post, if you find it, let me know and I'll update): https://undelete.pullpush.io/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/1cw3vgc/winner_of_regeneron_young_scientist_award_50k/

• A few hours after the original reddit post, a post from a "friend" of the ISEF kid was also posted in /r/A2C. It's honestly too hilarious to summarize appropriately. Let's just say, this "friend" sounds a lot like a mad sexy Indian dude parent

Deleted post: https://old.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/1cwhf7k/accused_of_chaeting_at_major_science_fair/

Web Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20240520162210/https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/1cwhf7k/accused_of_chaeting_at_major_science_fair/?rdt=50206

Notice the spelling errors, probably just a coincidence that our accused finalist also made several spelling errors in his $55k winning project

• Of course, a popular post should NEVER be allowed to stay up so our A2C jannies got straight to work and deleted the original post as well as this one, banned several accounts, deleted comments, etc. Oh you expected the jannies to explain why they deleted it? you're not entitled to other people's labor, chud: https://old.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/1cw3vgc/winner_of_regeneron_young_scientist_award_50k/

• On the sidelines, lots of drama is happening in various Groomercords associated w/ college admissions & ISEF. As I am not a , I have not joined them and don't know the details. But I have heard from my younger siblings' friends that a bunch of kids from Pai's school (CCA a bougie San Diego school with enough resources to literally have a lab at their school) "raided" a server (aka spammed the shit out of it) making fun of the kid/enjoyed being the center of attention.

• Other Reddit posts on smaller subs are also gaining traction: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/comments/1cwpfcg/biggest_high_school_science_fair_had_academic/

  

• Now if this was just a Reddit story, eh whatever. But never underestimate the ability of a to find random stories that fit their narrative https://www.karlstack.com/p/exclusive-scandal-at-americas-top

• On top of this reporting, it began blowing up on Twitter (blowing up being relative to how much a children's science fair can be expected to blow up). Several huge accounts (100k+ followers) chimed in and Twitter commenters began showing off their r-slurredness as usual and creating some tasty drama.

(see screenshots in comment)

• The lab the kid worked at had originally made a post celebrating, but started getting mean comments and have since deleted it. https://x.com/WallySeldom/status/1792656953421992082

• Don't forget: ISEF is a global competition. So our BING CHILLING friends also started talking about it.

https://bbs.wenxuecity.com/znjy/6853039.html

https://huaren.us/showtopic.html?topicid=3018297

(See comments for screenshots)

• So, what has Society For Science and Regeneron ISEF done now that everyone knows & this is getting public attention? Disabled their YouTube comments of course!

• Ok, just kidding, they also apparently sent out an email to all Fair Directors (people who run the local fairs) saying they are "investigating" idk, from looking at the Open Letter document, seems like some kids did all the investigating for you dumbasses. And this isn't soft plagiarism/exaggerating, this is the kind of shit that gets your paper retracted as a Dana-Farber Cancer Institute tenured professor, so not sure what's left to investigate.

• What happens next? You decide! Some are worried that this kid might kill himself (seems unlikely given that he still has his socials up, posted about it on Linkedin, his family members and him are full denying that he cheated, etc). Some say frick dem kids and want him/his parents to go to jail. It seems the only way this can escalate further is if it makes it into the national news (any chuds want to send an anonymous tip to InfoWars ). I'll conclude with a quote from the kid himself, as these were his candid thoughts after winning $55k for a fraudulent project. You may think that he would be thankful, excited to see how his research will be implemented, wants to keep working on plastic waste research- you'd be wrong!

I'm looking forward to my future and how this ISEF award can really help me out

Wow, regardless of what happens, I too am excited to see this kid's future: he clearly has already mastered the art of research in 2024 and is well on his way to academia! Best of luck little

Also I have more screenshots but I hit the upload limit. Fricking