At a small Greek airport we arrived 10 minutes before our flight bc my husband’s cousin (our ride) took forever to finish eating his cheese and honey and he was like “oh hi Vasili they’re with me” and they just….let us on https://t.co/vi11Kr5ycD

— Cartoons Hate Her! (@CartoonsHateHer) September 11, 2025

A lot of places outside of America are like that, especially in the less-developed world. It’s about who you know and if you can pay the bribe. We crossed the border from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan back in ’97 because we had cash and someone knew someone, not because we had any documents (we did not).

We also had guns in our faces. I don’t think they would’ve shot us if we’d just turned around. But you never know.

There are almost two hundred countries in the world. The polite fiction is that all of them are fully sovereign, but to me it looks like only six are—the United States of America, Russia, China, India, Iran, and Turkey.

— Ben Landau-Taylor (@benlandautaylor) September 4, 2025

I’d add Brazil. Arguably Indonesia as well.

This is true, but I think it’s also somewhat unfair to women. Both because of their lesser physical strength, reduced exposure to violence, and lack of training, most women simply aren’t very dangerous in 1:1 (or 2:1, etc.) combat. They have far lower propensity to use violence even when it’d be warranted and called for, and less ability to prosecute it successfully if they choose to do so.

This changes the equation on how a threat is handled even it’s rare. I’m pretty sure if I needed to do so I could take out two women who attacked me at the same time, but the average woman would be hard pressed to take out even one man long enough to get away. And even if I am attacked by a man, I have a good chance of at least doing enough immediate damage to escape, and a fair chance with two. And that’s because I am unafraid of violence and, frankly, very good at it. Those facts are not true of the vast majority of women.

All that said, Aella is correct that women are often too fearful. More than actually benefits them. Women most often overestimate risk in this realm by some absurd amount, like 1,000x or even 10,000x the actual danger and threat.

But weirdly, they also underestimate risk by some equal and absurd amount of the “hot” bad boy they are pining for. He’s the one most likely to harm them, but they are nearly always completely blind to the Chad risk.

Why?

If someone breaks into your home, the onus should not be on you to pause and calculate what level of “reasonable force” some judge might later find acceptable.

In that moment, you don’t know if the intruder is armed, high, desperate, or intent on harming your family. The law…

— warhawk 🏴‍☠️ (@warhawk_109) August 21, 2025

I don’t care what the law says. If someone breaks into my house, I’ll kill them. Anything else is uncivilized. At least the US is mostly better about this.

I don’t give a shit what anyone thinks about what I listen to, read, or watch. “Guilty pleasures” are for the weak and the meek.

I do like sharing so my friends and such can see it. But I refuse to use Goodreads or any other data thievin’ “service.” Too bad there’s not much better without building it yourself. And I’m lazy.

Will try to write more mini-reviews. Try.

A lot of Gen Z simply cannot understand that people are actually genuinely attracted to one another. That there is no other motivation present.

This actuality is simply lost on them because it is not something they experience or are familiar with. A lost generation, disconnected from each other and from their own humanity.

I don’t find the Bill Burr-esque cliche about men “shoving their feelings way down inside” relatable at all. That sounds like what a chick thinks men do with their feelings because they start by assuming men have the same feelings as they do but that they just don’t express them.

— wanye (@wanyeburkett) August 15, 2025

I think this is partially true at least. Women assume men are defective women. But this isn’t so.

I have nothing I’m suppressing and have no real desire to express more feelings than I do. I think a lot of men are this way. I am not a defective woman, just as women are not defective men.

In the era of the late sixties and early seventies, it was made socially unacceptable to have any expectations of women at all.

No roles, no duties, no responsibilities, no societal influence, only an infinity of choice.

No feedback.

If and when men express no expectations… https://t.co/VPIG8CgRcU

— Devon Eriksen (@Devon_Eriksen_) August 14, 2025

It’s a bit cruel, but I think his evaluation of her is pretty dead on. She seems incredibly self-centered. There’s no thought to what she can contribute to a relationship. She looks fine but is not beautiful enough to coast on that alone, so she actually has to provide something. And there’s no sign of that. Based on that short clip, I wouldn’t have stepped forward either.

It takes real bravery to get up in front of people and do that on video, so kudos for that at least.

Do some people honestly never cook?

Yes. I knew a woman in Seattle who never cooked. Or at least she had not in fifteen years. She used the microwave sometimes. All the rest of her food consumption was takeout and restaurants.

Not that unusual actually in large cities.

400+ U.S. psychology professors were asked how much they believed in socially controversial but well-supported scientific findings. Male professors tended to believe unkind truths, and female professors, kind lies pic.twitter.com/mJ0torHC2j

— William Meijer (@williameijer) August 3, 2025

That tracks with what I’ve noticed as well. In general, women are more agreeable in nature. It has benefits in some areas and drawbacks in others — just like the things that more men tend to be and to believe.

Tell me you grew up poor without telling me you grew up poor.

• Bowls, plates and glasses from dog food bags.
• Knives from the 1940s with rotting wood handles.
• Trailer park.
• A good week was when you got the brand-name hot dogs. A bad week is when there was only old bread in the refrigerator.
• Family car repossessed.
• K-Mart clothes and shoes that fell apart in weeks.

Seeing my dad build a go-kart from a discarded lawn mower engine from the dump, some sheet metal, some lawn mower tires (also discards) as well as some metal tubes was pretty cool though. We never could’ve afforded one otherwise. He was ridiculously good at things like that.

Camille Paglia in the 1990s:

Sexual harassment guidelines, if overdone, will end by harming women more than helping them. In the rough play of the arena, women must make their own way. If someone offends you by speech, you must learn to defend yourself by speech. The answer cannot be to beg for outside help to curtail your opponent’s free movement. The message conveyed by such attitudes is that women are too weak to win by men’s rules and must be awarded a procedural advantage before they even climb into the ring. Teasing and taunting have always been intrinsic to the hazing rituals of male bonding. The elaborate shouting matches and satirical putdowns of African tribal life can still be heard in American pop music (“You been whupped with the ugly stick!” —uproarious laughter) and among drag queens, where it’s called “throwing shade.” Middle-class white women have got to get over their superiority complex and learn to talk trash with the rest of the human race.

A sex-free workplace is neither possible nor desirable.

She saw #MeToo’s inevitable result before most of the dipshits perpetrating it like Moira Donegan were out of diapers.

I think I know how I could be scammed.

None of the standard methods work on me. I don’t care about authority, I’m nearly impossible to intimidate and I don’t have any desire to rescue anyone (having low empathy is sometimes a benefit!).

But if someone gave me a plausible scenario of getting revenge or harming someone who had harmed me, I think that sort of scam could get me — even if I were already aware I could be scammed that way. That’s like catnip to me so yeah, could happen. I can see how it’d play out.

It is absurdly depressing how robin hood and other sports betting derived "investment" apps have basically breached every firewall designed to keep the general public from getting mulched like pigs into a slaughterhouse. https://t.co/o2uDKF0uQX

— Sasho Todorov (@SashoTodorov1) July 21, 2025

Agreed. Most people should not be permitted to do any form of short-term trading. It takes nerves of steel, very high intelligence, tolerance for risk and stress, and the ability to lose money without flinching. You’re playing against the worst sharks in the world who will eat you alive without a second thought. Most people will be bankrupted.

And yes, I do know. I day-traded for years actively and made 64x my initial investment before I mostly hung up my spurs. Yes, that is 64 times, not 64%. Unfortunately, I did not have all that much capital to start so I didn’t get as rich as I could’ve if I’d started out wealthy.

Did kids in the 70s/80s/90s really roam freely like in*Stranger Things*, or is it a movie myth?

Damn, Gen Z is so fucked. The freedom we took for granted seems like some grand myth to them.

But to answer, yes, it was extremely common. Every kid over 8-9 wandered nearly anywhere without much restriction. I biked miles and miles away from my house when I was 10+. I also used to do shit like swim down an entire six-mile long river by myself with no flotation device or life jacket starting when I was 11-ish. No one cared.

In that sense, the world we inhabited in the 1980s and 1990s was a better, freer one. And I think we had a lot more fun.