Protoclone, the world's first bipedal, musculoskeletal android. pic.twitter.com/oIV1yaMSyE

— Clone (@clonerobotics) February 19, 2025

The Protoclone is a faceless, anatomically accurate synthetic human with over 200 degrees of freedom, over 1,000 Myofibers, and 500 sensors.

— Clone (@clonerobotics) February 19, 2025

Torso 2 with an actuated abdomen. pic.twitter.com/ciggvr7b06

— Clone (@clonerobotics) December 6, 2024

same vibe pic.twitter.com/CTgtgFDyDu

— Chansoo Byeon (@ByeonChansoo) February 19, 2025

!schizomaxxxers

We'll be unveiling the GBVSR Character Pass 2 trailer at the Evo Awards! 👀

Tune in at 5 p.m., Feb 15 (PT) to join us in celebrating the best of fighting games and be the first to experience the reveal.

🏆️ More about the Evo Awards:https://t.co/0TyMRVf7go#GBVSR #EvoAwards https://t.co/F9QwGADcRZ

— GBVS/Granblue Fantasy Versus (@gbvs_official) February 14, 2025

Not entirely unexpected, they are following Crapcum's steps. I expect most if not all FG devs are going to start doing the same

At least two characters are pretty much confirmed

Ilsa

Siete / Seofon

The other two are wild cards. They could go with a Divine General rep

Six Dragon rep (I want the fricking cat)

And some others but I got lazy halfway in.

I'm kind of amazed that these people really exist. There's a guy here who is so much like them it's just mind bending.

Just today he (let's call him Dwilton) came in (late) and I heard him yell across the warehouse to a laborer "WHERE"S MY FUN DIP." The laborer had borrowed the box of fun dip that wasn't being eaten because it's gross and has not given it back. I thought Dwilton could not be actually mad about this fun dip, but when I saw his face, he was. And that's a trope of these characters right? Any perceived rudeness is taken as a great injustice of the company in general, rather than a personal failure in one or both directions that could be rectified with maturity.

So then he started ranting about how this laborer has been hiding. Then about how there was a bird in the warehouse that dive bombed him and almost hurt him! I was like Dwilton, you sure are fired up this morning, and he was like no i'm not all crosseyed.

He's a super sad and I could go on for pages if I start remembering his other stuff, but the point is he's like this character from the office and office space.

He has literally bitched about not getting his allotment of free food at company functions.

What is this personality?

Back when he was signing USMCA he had this to say about it

And today, we're finally ending the NAFTA nightmare and signing into law the brand-new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. (Applause.) Very special. Very, very special.

The USMCA is the largest, fairest, most balanced, and modern trade agreement ever achieved. There's never been anything like it. Other countries are now looking at it, but there can't be a border like that because, believe it or not, that is by far the biggest border anywhere in the world, in terms of economy, in terms of people. There's nothing even close.

This is a colossal victory for our farmers, ranchers, energy workers, factory workers, and American workers in all 50 states and, you could almost say, beyond — because it's all beyond. This is all over the world even though it's at one beautiful border — where, by the way, a very major powerful wall is, right now, being built. (Laughter.) Okay? I don't know if I should say that at this particular reading. I know last night it got a very big hand. (Laughter.) Today, they're a little bit like, "Are we supposed to clap now?" (Laughter.)

USMCA has a much weaker dispute resolution process than NAFTA did (something US producers absolutely loathe, Canadian provinces really love doing stupid shit with trade and they can't hold them accountable under USMCA like they could with NAFTA) where countries exchange & approve each others lists of potential dispute panelists. Even in the event daddy has updated this from Biden's list because the treaty requires all the countries to have agreed to changes its unlikely daddy will be able to front load it with yes men. It also allows Canada to just go around the US to the WTO.

The lumber is itself a great deal of lulz that has been going on for decades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_softwood_lumber_dispute but there are three new opportunities for $DRAMA inflation:

• Daddy really doesn't seem to understand how trade works, a tariff on Canadian oil would immediately increase the cost of gas & energy in the US. Just the comment he was thinking about doing it added more than a $1 to oil prices

• Daddy is going to have to argue why his own treaty sucks and why its totally Biden's fault his treaty sucks

• First challenge to congressional authority. Taxing is an enumerated power of congress and the ability of a president to create tariffs is limited. His pet theory is that the impoundment authority that lets sanctions work allows him to create any tariffs he wants. Congress have to choose between challenging daddy or setting a precedent that future presidents could use however they wanted. Bong's PM called you a mean name? 9001% tariffs on all bong goods.

I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: the problem with Rory and people like him is that he has an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130. This false arrogance drives so much elite failure over the last 40 years.

— JD Vance (@JDVance) January 30, 2025

Context is the heatmap meme about differences between liberals and conservatives (oikophobia vs xenophobia)

!chuds !sneed he's IQ-poasting

!oldstrags did you know Metafilter still exists? It does!

Did you know it's a giant circlejerk even more insular than reddit? Of course you did.

(For those who don't know, MeFi is an ancient internet forum that costs $5 to join. It's like SomethingAwful if it were never funny, or rdrama if you losers had jobs and could afford 5 dollars to keep out the thirdies)

Anyway, in 2014 they had a struggle session about thinking the unspeakable wrongs.

Wendy Carlos is a transwoman. Seriously, I mentioned this once and it got instadeleted because WTF? apparently some longstanding flame war of which I wasn't even aware.

I don't know who Wendy Carlos is, but I know that trans women are women . There's no such thing as a "transwoman".

Anyway, after few thousand comments the thread devolves into people getting their fee-fees hurt and demanding apologies

If you want a personal apology for a comment that was not directed at you then you might as well just come out and say so instead of continuing to harp on it despite the fact that sweetkid has explained her reasoning and sincerely apologized to the actual people involved.

Then later on, down the end there's a big argument about whether it's okay to dox a 27 year old dude who really really likes a 17 y/o

This comment does not look to me like an apology or an expression of misunderstanding. It looks to me like an admission he googled the information and intentionally doxxed someone he was characterizing as a "libertarian" and "sexual predator."

So folks are free to read the actual MeTa I am recalling and decide for themselves whether or not I am wildly misremembering anything or mischaracterizing it.

Y'all can't behave!

Painful. Might be time to close the thread?

We're playing the turboneurodivergent Dawn of Civilization mod for Civilization IV that replicates world history. !g*mers !historychads

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

336AD, the Roman Empire is #1 in the world by far but the Roman Golden Age has concluded. We've just conquered Nubia. The Western Roman Empire more or less officially ended in 476AD when Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustus so we're coming up on the timeframe we're supposed to be dead.

We successfully avoided the Western Roman Empire/Eastern Roman Empire split but more civilizations are going to rise and attempt to fracture off of our existing territory. The Arabs are gonna spawn with a huge butt army ready to spread Islam (which we founded already in Egypt ) and the European powers are going to start cropping up.

I'll need to prepare for this and be ready to retake this shit at a moment's notice from armies leveraged against me.

My goal is to vassalize the European powers so I can benefit from their global colonization.

We've had a small archer regiment providing us contact with India but only now I've gotten a scout east who can pass through the Bengal rainforest to meet China.

They inexplicably hate us for existing as with everyone else in the world, but they're willing to trade. They offer jade and venison for our wine and dyes with a lil gold to sweeten the deal.

They seem to be doing well but we're still #1 in the world by far. Persia is the only empire that comes close to matching us technologically - only they can research something we haven't researched yet.

Persia also has a lot of gold. I might trade them some technology for cash at benefit to them. This will improve relations, and I have a strong espionage network going with them so if they research something I don't have I can just steal it. Also, I predict the Arabs are going to BTFO them badly when they spawn.

With the money we gain from the tech trade, we can actually apply more espionage power to steal what they research. DEVIOUS!

With continued espionage harassment we get our first Great Spy, Locusta*. If a civilization were far ahead of us we could send her to infiltrate for a huge boost, but as we're top dog I'll settle her in Roma for a permanent +12 espionage and small science boost that will continue throughout history. +12 is quite significant early on, so this is pretty advantageous.

_{*This is a particularly cool article I recommend reading}

The dipshit Ethiopians continue to be difficult, despite everything we've done for them. Repeated Catholic missions to them have been failures and even the Catholic presence in Aksum eventually disappears. They will not bend from Orthodoxy. Even more insulting is that they've now sworn fealty to Persia. It's like they think we're a threat to them. All we've done is help them out and attempt to bring them peacefully into the Catholic faith.

They are officially a lost cause. No salvation for them.

Fine, because I have a new black best friend, the pagan Mande in West Africa

After researching Compass I'm able to pass ships through Cape Verde Peninsula and send a mission to Djoboro

I can't wait to spread the word of Christ and have a new Catholic brother!!!

Barbarians start to swarm about 400AD. The Roman Roads are a godsend as I can get my dudes quickly from one place to another as different areas get pounded. Byzantion as an espionage stronghold allows me to send spies out use the Citizenship bribery mechanic, this felt like a gimmick but it's actually super useful here. Just like irl I'm able to pay off the huns to spare Constantinople + I get free Hunnic Horse Archers to fight back with

By 450 it's a full on barbarian invasion

Did you know a !foidmoment almost caused the fall of Rome? In the 400s Valentinian III had a complete for a sister named Honoria. She was notorious for fricking and sucking around the Imperial palace and Valentinian graciously attempted to set her up with a nice senator while he was attempting to fend off the pillaging of hunnic warlord Attila. Honoria was pissed off by this and wrote a gushy love letter to Attila the Hun out of spite.

The Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila by Raphael

Attila interpreted this letter as a marriage proposal and invaded Italy directly aiming to claim the seat of Rome, which he felt he gained a rightful claim to. Pope Leo I the Great met with Attila personally and somehow persuaded him to back off.

Our stability is okay, but definitely starting to dip. Okay is not good enough for what's coming. As always, military and foreign trickle down with the rest of the world being buttholes and barbarians up in our shit. Economy and expansion are not booming anymore.

Our treasury is doing alright but could be improved (right now we're running 40% research funding). Domestic could be improved easily with some civic changes.

We've researched Feudalism and now have another Legitimacy civic available to us. We don't have much reason to run Citizenship at this point, other than bribing barbarians, but our military is now spread out enough to deal with them. Vassalage is lower upkeep with compatibility with Thalassocracy. This + the unit upkeep will get us about 30 more GP per turn. We also change to Caste System like we should have ages ago, since Slavery is outdated.

Last time I won by researching "Civil Service" first, completing the final historic victory condition. I undid this so that I could attempt a Space victory instead. We're getting to a point where I'm running out of shit to research OTHER than Civil Service and the Sassanids, our only near-equal won't research it either

This is kinda funny and forcing me to do things differently. I'm going to discover Gunpowder much earlier than I thought and get stronger artillery. "Civil Service" obsoletes our Legion so I have 100s more of those running around (which is good, they're based). But these slackers really need to research it soon so I can fail

I'll have to help these idiots out a little and sell them another tech at an absurdly generous price.

~472-480AD Ostrogoths pop up right outside Rome. I think this is meant to represent Odacer or Theodoric, right on schedule. The precision put into this mod is

I wasn't expecting this but I have knights (Lancers) in Roma at this point

The game does not appreciate that I survived Theodoric. Charlemagne and France spawn as an independent kingdom, taking Paris away from us.

Bourdeoux and Clermont secede too, and we must fight to get them back.

Remember how when Rome spawned we were given a great military advantage? Well now France gets it and I have to pull assault forces from everywhere in the empire to recapture it.

How's that for a Stack of Doom motherlovers

France's doomstack is defeated by my gigadoomstack and I recapture Clermont. France cannot capitulate for some reason Probably a DoC thing for new civilizations. I don't remember all the rules. I think once "Rise of the French" ends they can become a vassal. I don't want to annihilate them, my goal is to have them become a vassal and take advantage of their colonization. For now, I've taken back a city, taken out their army and shown them who's boss.

I'm fine with just holding Clermont as it gives me foot access to Iberia. I just need to get Roman culture flowing fast.

This will be the first of many as new civs start to spawn.

The Vikings/Norse have arrived for example and introduced themselves in England. They may start to raid, but no threat of secession here.

However, around 600AD a certain guy who cannot be depicted visually is born in the Arabian Peninusla

Egypt and the Levant is lost Most of my army is kicked out and expelled to Knossos in Crete. I don't have enough boats to pick them up in, so they're stranded on Crete for a while

Conquering Nubia turns out to have been a good idea because it's outside of the flip zone, and gives us a southern vector for attack.

Next time: crusades

Next

Subreddit info

/r/bikecommuting is a simple subreddit for users to post biking photos, news discussions, or hot takes about biking.

OP's Complaint

OP, after being confronted taking their bike inside their local Home Depot (a home improvement store), makes the following post, complete with an image for reference:

Home Depot told me I can't bring my bike into the store

I typically bring my bike into the hardware store with me unless there are proper bike racks. I don't see a problem with it as it's no bigger than a cart. The Lowe's by me removed their bike racks for an air compressor so I take it in. This Home Depot is new and I had looked for their bike racks but couldn't see them in the front of the warehouse, so I took it in.

When checking out I was told I can't bring my bike in as it is a safety concern. I gave a rebuttal that it's no bigger than a cart and they said it could fall and block an entire aisle when the carts can't fall over. I didn't continue the questions because they just work there but it seemed ridiculous to me.

Apparently their bike racks are in the back of the warehouse completely isolated, not somewhere i would feel comfortable locking my bike.

I'm going to continue bringing my bike into the store.

[Image of bird's eye view of the Home Depot and parking lot shows the entrance on the northwest side (marked with an arrow by OP), and the outdoor bike racks on the southeast area (circled for our convenience)]

Users debate the bike hike

It's a safety concern:

Bike traffic can be a safety concern around the entrance area with people, trolleys and cars. In some way this is not so bad. At least they have bike racks which is nice! Many stores don't provide that where I live.

When you say bike traffic, are you imagining OP riding their bike into the store?

Of course I'm not. I just mean that the store front is usually a place you don't want bikes parked and the traffic of them. Would be better to have bike parking on the parking lot, but we all know that is unlikely.

"Get over it"

Get over it, you are being a whiny ninny. I park mine at the car corral at Lowe's and never had an issue.

OP: Straight to name calling huh, sticks and stones... I would have found a suitable spot to lock it up outside if it had been a problem before, this was the first time I had been told not to bring it in

I intentionally ram carts into bikes at the cart corral.

How would you feel if someone intentionally rammed a cart into your car?

Guess they'd have to decide how much their Cannondale and legs are worth to them

It was more a question about intentionally damaging someone's property than a question of whether you like cyclists or not. I think it's just rude to ruin someone's shit, even if you don't inherently like them. Treat people the way you want to be treated, that's at least how I feel.

Then strap your bike to the bike rack.

"there is no bike rack"

Edit: well, this guy has a bike rack at his place lmao, mine doesn't have it tho rip

Private property, private rules:

You sound like an entitled jerk.

It's private property, they can have a rule that doesn't allow bikes. Just because it isn't convenient for you, doesn't mean you can just do whatever you want. [downmarseyd]

You'd have a point if they didn't install bike racks on the back side of the building forcing users to walk all the way around. They KNEW what they were doing. Treating us like shit because they can and we have no power.

Okay? So shop somewhere else.

It's a private business, you have to follow their rules.

Oh my god you have to spend a whole extra minute walking around the corner. Life gets much harder, hunny

Be fair, to walk all the way around a super store is more like 3 minutes.

and it's more about the indignation. Like forcing women to breastfeed near the trash bins out of sight.

OP should get trespassing charges:

This is a reasonable rule. I hope OP gets trespassed. [downmarseyd]

Why? To both.

Bringing a bike into a store is weird, like the people who bring their dogs everywhere. At least dogs are cute.

OP feels like flouting rules on private property.

I get that to some degree, but the part about getting trespassed is extreme to me. It's not as if they shoplifted or hurt anybody.

The audacity of OP:

wtf why would you bring a bike into the store

OP: Because I would be nervous about locking it in a place that, to me, would be ideal for a thief. And I was loading directly into my panniers using it as a cart

That's why people hate bicyclists [downmarseyd]

OP: Right...

What about dogs?

I can bring my dog but you can't bring a bicycle!?

Bicycles shit in the aisles, dogs don't.

I was bitten by a bicycle in lighting.

Did you go to the hospital? I heard bicycles carry rabies

I actually died right there in the lighting aisle. So that why I'm against bikes and pro car now.

Singular takes

Too far to walk for your American butt?

They maybe take a cut of the profit from each bike stolen

bikers are the most oppressed class

"I'm going to continue bringing my bike into the store."

So, you were literally told it's against store policy but you're so entitled it doesn't apply to you. You're a garbage excuse for a human.

Sounds like a battle of stubbornness is to be had. They're not going to ban you from the store over this so just keep doing what you're doing.

If the store said don't bring your bike inside, don't bring your bike inside. I can't bring my car inside.

Full thread with more bike takes here

https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1i6aypn/ops_complaining_screeches_to_a_halt_when_users_in/

Thanks to @nuclearshill who first posted it here!

!mensfootball

!bookworms to discuss chapter 3 of Andrei Bely's "Petersburg".

I loled at this passages. Despite being a commie himself Bely could take a joke and make fun of his own movement. Despite the rather complex language this book is quite satirical.

Aleksandr Ivanovich is sort of a charming neurodivergent for a terrorist. Nikolai Apollonovich is a whiny cute twink and his dad is right about him.

Sofia Petrovna needs better friends and would seriously benefit of owning a dildo, but unfortunately she's a weeb in 1900s Russia.

I slept with 600 men in 2024 — now I’m looking to settle down and find love https://t.co/2DD0JSJyvJ pic.twitter.com/3qHnawZPnc

— New York Post (@nypost) February 17, 2025

scene: there's and old kpop group called 2NE1(it's kpop your parents listened to, just ask them ), one of the members is called Dara, who is very pretty and cute.

anyway, redditors recently discovered a clip from her blogging channel called DaraTV, in said clip she talked about how she once dated a 14 year old guy shortly, the catch? she was 19 at the time(altough she told the dude she was 16).

naturally, redditors think this is heccin manipulative and basically amounts to r*pe and yada yada yada, you know the drill. here's a few reddit threads with people losing their minds

https://old.reddit.com/r/kpoprants/comments/1ij1xyi/2ne1s_dara_tells_minzy_that_she_dated_a_14yo_when/

https://old.reddit.com/r/kpopthoughts/comments/1im3xmr/dara_said_she_likes_younger_men_and_for_here/

as for me? i have already put in my application to become Dara's fulltime boytoy

!kpop

This is an absolutely bombshell: the story about the cancelled elections in Romania is even far more sinister than previously thought.

A new report from investigative outlet https://t.co/b0c4sv4Xj3 (https://t.co/j2gt54H0F0) reveals that the TikTok campaign which was cited in the… https://t.co/ztQTGLRd5s

— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) December 22, 2024

A month ago, November 24th, Romania held a presidential election.

The main parties running were the National Liberal Party (PNL) of Klaus Iohanis and the Social Democratic Party (PSD) of Marcel Ciolacu. Both Europhile, bureaucratic centrists. One slightly more pro-gibs. Imagine democrats and pre-Trump republicans but even more corrupt, stupid and incompetent. There were also other parties, some woke, others !chuds, but all tiny and boring.

Since Poomania has a multi-round election schema, the top candidates, Lasconi, Ciolacu, Simion, and Sosoaca, were angling for the top two spots and trying to kick their main rivals into third or fourth place.

Then election day came around and to everyone's chagrin all four got blown the frick out the water by a guy nobody'd ever heard of: Calin Georgescu, a far-right martial artist whose entire campaign was ran on tiktok. He would proceed to the second round and could potentially become the new leader of Romania (dubious honor)

This post is not about that.

After the election everyone panicked. Woke young romanians panicked because their favourite gibs and environmentalist causes were blown out the water. Geriatric bureaucrats panicked because the grift could end. Romania's European and American "allies" panicked because the last thing you want your puppets doing is voting in their best interest. In short, everyone chimped out and started flinging shit wherever they could to try to prevent Mr. Georgescu's further election.

The only people that didn't panic were the plurality of Romanians who'd voted for Mr. Georgescu. This is because they were too busy consooming tiktok reels.

On December 6nd, to nobody's surprise, a Constitutional Court made up of representatives of the loser parties overruled their earlier certification of the election because the Romanian president "declassified" some "information" that Calin Georgescu was - gasp -

A RUSSIAN AGENT

Somebody'd put together the equivalent of a Steele dossier "proving" that Tru- Georgescu was elected not thanks to savvy social media marketing and the stupidity, apathy and desire for change of Romanian voters, but LE HECKING EVIL RUSSARINOS

The EU, Western NGOs, CIA handlers etc. all hurriedly advised the immediate publication of this information and after some backroom political pressure the court made a mockery of the very concept of democracy by throwing out the election. NATO literally commanded them to do it, and the cucks complied, lmao. The only actual evidence was that Georgescu'd misreported his finances on some forms.

For comparison, the president elect of the United States misused or misappropriated over 500 times that in campaign funds. Nobody gives a shit because we're not kitties and no red-blooded American gives a shit about campaign finance contributions

Even in a shithole like Romania people mostly found the election annulment outrageous, except for this guy for some reason

Now the country will have a redo election in March or May or some shit and the Romanian glowies are busy raiding and harassing Georgescu so him and others like him will never again challenge the primacy of the unelected fаggots in charge of Draculand. No doubt they'll find he scratched his butt with his left hand instead of the right (contra EU directive 14[a]2.1) and needfully put him away for infinite lakh years.

This post is not about that.

@FourthEggnog's r-slurred gypsy butt made a couple of posts about these events swallowing the Russia hoax hook, line, and sinker.

This is because he, like every Romanian, is dumber than the darkest, stupidest !dixie swamp !BIPOCs

His hypothesis (to put it generously) was that Romania was not actually a failing regime of bean counters, incompetent narcissists, subverted and bribed traitors, etc. In fact, all of these were but a front for the actual power behind the throne, a shadowy decades-old cabal of commie spooks

This form of "reasoning" is common among the severely r-slurred. 310+ dramatards upmarseyd and presumably believed his schizophrenic ramblings, despite the fact they made no sense.

...

I was going to go through both posts and link all the shit he said that contradicted itself or was batshit r-slurred but it's literally both giant posts. Seriously, read them. They're entertaining (in the @kaamrev neurodivergent-on-amphetamines way) but 180 degrees diametric to the actual situation. It's insane that someone can have this tenuous a connection to reality while still being able to type.

BREAKING NEWS

Couple days ago a Romanian investigative outlet published a bombshell investigative report into who ACTUALLY funded Georgescu.

To the SHOCK of !nooticers it was... the ruling party itself

A new report from investigative outlet snoop.ro reveals that the TikTok campaign which was cited in the declassified Romanian intelligence documents (summarized in my post below 👇) as evidence of foreign interference - and used as grounds to cancel the presidential election - was actually paid for by the ruling National Liberal Party (PNL), the very party that supported cancelling the elections!

According to the investigation, the campaign called "#EchilibrușiVerticalitate" that the intelligence services claimed was "identical to Russian operations in Ukraine" was organized by a marketing firm called Kensington Communication, hired by PNL (the ruling party), who paid Kensington over 1 million RON for it (about $210,000). Kensington then used a platform called FameUp to coordinate 130 influencers with specific scripts and messaging guidelines.

This puts the declassified intelligence documents in an entirely new light. What they presented as evidence of foreign interference was actually a campaign paid for by the ruling party. The same party that then supported using these allegations of "foreign interference" to cancel an election they were losing.

Even more bizarrely, confronted by journ*lists, Kensington Communication initially denied using the hashtag but later admitted to creating the campaign for PNL, claiming it was meant to be called "#echilibrusiseriozitate" and was changed to "#echilibrusiverticalitate" without their knowledge. Yeah, right...

This means that either the Romanian intelligence services didn't know this was a PNL-funded campaign when they used it as evidence to cancel the election (which raises huge questions about their competence), or they did know and didn't disclose it (which raises even bigger questions about their integrity).

In any case, it seems to indicate that something extremely sinister happened in Romania: a ruling party used intelligence services to cancel an election based on "foreign interference" evidence that they themselves paid for!

Followup:

Also, interestingly, Politico is completely misrepresenting this bombshell investigation: Report ties Romanian liberals to TikTok campaign that fueled pro-Russia candidate

Let me show you how they're trying to spin it.

Politico claims that the investigation shows that "a campaign from a governing center-right party may have been hijacked to benefit far-right candidate." They're framing PNL as being a victim here, seeing their TikTok campaign "hijacked to benefit Georgescu".

But the snoop.ro investigation demolishes this narrative with hard evidence because they found Kensington's (PNL's contractor) original brief and proved influencers were following their exact scripts. The investigation shows exact matches between the script and influencer videos. How is that "hijacking" when the influencers were doing exactly what the brief told them to do?

Most importantly, Politico completely buries the lead: a ruling party paid for a social media campaign that was then used by intelligence services as evidence of 'foreign interference' to cancel an election. That's not a 'hijacking' - that's an explosive scandal about potential abuse of intelligence services for political purposes.

This isn't sloppy journ*lism - it's active misrepresentation. Politico has access to the same snoop.ro investigation we're reading. They chose to ignore the documented evidence of word-for-word script following and instead push this 'hijacking' narrative that the evidence explicitly contradicts.

Instead of investigating how a ruling party's campaign ended up being used as evidence to cancel a democratic election, Politico is helping construct a cover story. They're turning what appears to be potential intelligence service abuse into a story about campaign "hijacking".

Which means we potentially have another major scandal on our hands here: major EU media outlets - the same EU media outlets that regularly lecture about threats to democracy - appear to help obscure what might be the most serious abuse of intelligence services for political purposes in recent EU history.``

I called it as not being the Russians two fricking weeks ago

But this dumbass doubled down on the Russian collusion shit. Fricking tard.

HIs "explanation" goes on and on, increasingly unhinged. Blueanon on the Danube.

To conclude, I am now convinced - as you should be - that the Romanian Constitutional Court was correct in cancelling this election. Where it erred is in not cancelling every future election as well, as Romanians are too stupid to self-govern. Instead, American viceroys must be appointed, to guide the ignorant and wayward vlach peasant into a comfortable, pleasant and thought-free life licking NATO's taint while selling his country and resources to our benevolent corporations.

British tabloid Daily Mail claims to have obtained a leaked peace plan, allegedly proposed by Trump to end the war in Ukraine. The source is allegedly a Ukrainian media outlet Strana:

➡️ A ceasefire will be achieved by Easter, April 20th.

➡️ Ukraine will not be able to join… pic.twitter.com/kr8DIaOhqE

— Sprinter Observer (@SprinterObserve) February 7, 2025

Řеddítоřs must bе nоw uļtřа mаd sínсе 3 wееks аgо thеу сļаímеd nо wау íts řеаļ

"Is insert thing about America really that bad?"

Yes, you dumb fricks. It's almost like some of us spent years telling you how dangerous this shit was, where it could lead, and you all fricking ignored it. Or told us we were overreacting. I hate to say I told you so, but we fricking told you so. I mean it's all been so god darn blatant for years and now you're surprised? Have you had your head up your butt for the past 10 years?? Are you incapable of performing a simple Google search? Go frick yourselves. You are part of what enabled all of this.

So congrats on joining the rest of us in reality, it sucks huh? Now stop asking inane questions and do something useful.

Reading books would be good. They Thought They Were Free by Milton Meyer and It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis in particular. Idfk. Do the work and learn so you can help fight this. We don't need hand wringing piss babies

Read a book, you hand wringing piss babies.

Telling on myself here, but I mostly only listen to true crime podcasts, and almost exclusively when I'm running or working out. I like them because there's a built-in element of drama and kind of trashy gossip of digging around in the refuse of someone else's life. Also a little tiny bit of fear/danger element that gets me amped up when I'm running, especially at night like what if I have to run away from a psycho???

I don't generally like sort of hang-out-and-shoot-the-shit interview podcasts, but I see that so so many people do. Is it a parasocial thing? Like if you like the hosts and you want to imagine being friends/lovers with them? Or maybe you are not a funny and clever person yourself / you have no inner monologue, so you need a podcast to fill your head with other people being funny and clever on your behalf?

Anyway, what do you look for in your podcasts? What should I start listening to?

Or this is an open thread, just chat about whatever. I got a new breadmaker and it fricking sucks. How do you know if a breadmaker is bad or just the recipes or maybe you suck at pouring four ingredients in a pot and pressing the "start" button correctly? Someone told me I should use the recipes off Bread Daddy instead of the ones in the book that came with the machine. Anyone here tasted the Bread Daddy's dough?

Shot Show, a big firearm manufacturer convention, was this last week in Las Vegas. Some small manufacturing and machine shop by the name of BSD Fabrication & Works showed up promoting that they would be building copies of Russian VSS firearms, which would be a cool item to own.

Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons interviewed them and posted a video yesterday about his conversation with them, in which he expresses skepticism about their ability to do so (for example, Ian finds their comment about how "easy" it is to stamp metal concerning) but genuinely does hope for the best.

He also makes a comment about this in a private Facebook group, informing people that he does not recommend giving them deposits beforehand.

In any case, the owner of the shop starts sperging out on his personal Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BNtQxTwmp/

Most comments are from people supporting him as he continues whining as much as he can.

Although there are instances of people pointing out that these are mild concerns and criticisms.

There's about 70 comments in the facebook post.

Redditors in the /r/nfa sub (dealing with laws and regs created from the National Firearms Act) also learn about this:

https://old.reddit.com/r/NFA/comments/1iafjns/has_anybody_seen_ians_video_on_the_bsd_vss/

BSD is a clown and a C tier machinist. Charged an arm and two legs for simple machine work in the old days of the form 1 community.

For the curious about his history. This guy even used to bead blast his parts to hide chatter on threads

ETA: the HUBRIS of BSD with the stamping question. Lol. Lmao, even.

If memory serves, he got banned from /r/NFA because he was constantly hawking his services.

Link referencing his history is further down.

The guy is a meth head and an absolutely terrible machinist.

The history referenced in that first comment is this link here (bunch of pictures in this post):

https://old.reddit.com/r/NFA/comments/16j4e0b/heads_up_about_bsd_fabrication_works_llc/

Ah the first picture explains his pricing. When I heard what he was charging for those Surefire conversions, I thought he was smoking crack. Turns out it's actually meth.

Anyways yea this r-slurred meth addict reeeing about a mild critique is definitely going to re-engineer a niche firearm and sell it to the masses.

!firearms

So I met up with this off Grindr and fricked him.

mtf, stereotype, communist, neurodivergent, type shit

Dude was rambling about some nonsense, and I just nodded along, waiting to get it over with. About an hour in, we got down to business and I fricked his butt (with a condom, obviously).

Tbh I felt kind of disgusted, but you know, neighbors just gotta take what they can get

It is what it is.

To find the mystical true femboy (biological male that passes as female with the exception of the peepee)

But as it turns out, they don't really exist or at least, they're so incredibly rare they might as well not exist

It's like finding a cryptid, but at the same time, trying to find that true femboy is almost addictive...

It's like gambling, trying to hit the jackpot.

"Maybe the next one... maybe just a few more profiles..."

Darn

Trans QUEEN in question. Dilapidated room , dirty carpet and greasy pikachu plushy an all!

!chuds lost another soldier in the r-slur war.....

I was just going to leave the thread blank for two reasons:

1) Since the film is so in love with cutesy little meta-metacommentary it seemed appropriate because

2) I felt absolutely nothing for this movie,

however that's too subtle, so like Cabin in the Woods itself I will now belabor the point long past anyone's ability to care.

I honestly don't even know where to begin with this. It wasn't offensively bad or anything a la Black Swan, it isn't good-bad like Chopping Mall, it's not just plain old serviceable and therefore solid in its decency like The Omen, and it certainly isn't good. And it's like it was written to preemptively shield itself from criticism.

I could call it formulaic. The defense would be that of course it's formulaic, that's the point of the movie haha they even named the generic slasher archetypes at the end, the formulaicism is part of the joke.

I could call it uninspired. The defense would similarly be that of course it's uninspired, there's a Cube-style room of rooms with all the monsters from everything, it's all deliberately derivative and referential.

I could call it not scary. The defense would again similarly be that this is also intentional, look how it's also billed as a comedy. Nevermind that it's not funny either, because it's also billed as a horror.

The plain and simple of it is that it is formulaic, and this goes for the meta-meta narrative as well. Yes the silly organization's point is to enact the contrived ritual that plays out with horror movie tropes because it's supposed to, that's not whats formulaic about it. It can be argued that every beat up to the descent into the facility is formulaic by design, but once they're through that door that excuse falls flat.

The plain and simple of it is that it is uninspired. One of the technicians remarks early on that they're allowed to cheat to make things play out as needed as much as they want. Later we see that security personnel gunning down the sacrifices meets the requirements—there's no reason not to lead with that and just shoot the whore first. Or to bomb the cabin after shooting the whore. Or literally anything else. The overarching narrative cannot be flimsy because the arguably intentionally shitty internal narrative is wink-wink-shitty to allow room for that larger one. The overall story is just there as an excuse to make 8104 different references (HAHA THE WHITEBOARD TALKS ABOUT THE R*PE TREES FROM EVIL DESD LOL) and give 3 second cameos to creatures from other movies. The facility and organization itself is just a Cube Zero knockoff anyway.

The plain and simple of it is that it is neither scary nor funny. There are no stakes even with the apocalypse on the horizon and then actualizing to end the film. Everyone is boring and sucks. Literally Shaggy from scooby doo as the lead can't go any other way. The humor predates it by several years but it all smacks of that atrocious Rian Johnson Star Wars movie with the yo momma joke; it's quip "comedy" without the quips but the exact same degree of unwarranted and omnipresent self-satisfaction.

This is, however, a lot more negativity than Cabin in the Woods strictly deserves. I don't feel any sort of profound loathing for it or anything, it did nothing to elicit any particular emotion that strong. It's a completely unremarkable hour and a half.

For a movie with such an incredibly promising cover and inexplicably golden critic reviews from the beforetimes when critics evaluated things by metrics other than how much gay s*x a film has in it, the only thing I feel in any notable sense is confusion as to how either of these things happened. That and I want to watch Hellraiser because cenobites are great even if they are bootleg and have 30 seconds of screentime in an utterly mid movie.

★★☆☆☆

!kino your thoughts?

cc @LainkeyKong as requested