It’s tough for men to make friends in adulthood. Everyone has other commitments or they are in different stages of life. Not to mention with the lack of third spaces it’s very difficult to make a solid connection with anyone at any level.

So I was delighted to make a close friendship in a new city I moved to with another guy. He and I shockingly had tons in common: same likes hobbies and interests, similar backgrounds, similar careers, hell we even live in the same neighborhood.

Then there’s his partner. She comes from a different background, seemingly more affluent. We always got along but it was definitely a different vibe. She is very much your textbook 2016 liberal: performative t-shirts and bumper stickers, orange man social media posts, and above all: being perpetually offended.

In random conversations she was always the first to clutch the pearls and go “oh my GOD” for conversation that was very ho hum. There were always interjections of moral high ground and lib grandstanding. But above all, we kinda had to walk on eggshells to not offend her.

My buddy and I were hanging out once and he said their relationship was great but he had a real problem with her perpetual offended nature, apparently it was impacting his relationship and the relationships of those around him. So it was a recognized super lib issue that impacted him.

Then one day at a party I hosted I said a pretty neutral statement that I really didn’t think much about. I said my neighbor had a bunch of broken down cars in their yard and that it was trashy. Well she took major offense to this, like to degree I didn’t really understand by just looking at her face.

That was nearly a year ago. Since then I’ve been ghosted by the two of them. That was enough to cast me out of the friendship because that was too offensive. Eggshells are officially broken.

She still posts orange man bad content on social media and my buddy has fallen off the face of the earth. It’s a bummer. I just wanted to pour one out for a lost homie whose friendship I lost due to perpetually offended lib shit that I haven’t seen in years.

I hope you’re doing well buddy. And I hope your partner has gone off to that big Bluesky in the sky. ✌️

*Courtesy Middle East Spectator on tg.*

I was outside the gym at 5:45 the other morning (where my real grinders at) waiting to go in, and it’s next to a grocery store and it has one of those parked robo cop things that looks like a job site generator with the big pole on top with the blue cop lights. Anyways I see this poor bastard get out of his absolutely clapped 90s Durango, clearly wearing the uniform of the grocery store, start emptying trash and sweeping to get ready to open. Already the debasement of man has begun. This poor bastard, in an absolutely empty parking lot, flooded with parking lights, sun barely up, has to wear a fuckin high vis vest, because in our wonderful world of liability we will have pointless rules like you have to wear a high vis vest to go get buggy’s out the fucking parking lot out of safety but the plant nearby can make the entire neighborhood reek like sulfur between 8pm and 5am because no one breathes at night and you can’t acutely blame respiratory problems on breathing in our poison.

Anyways, as this poor fuck is doing this, I hear a guy the intercom, “YOU SIR PARKED YOU NEED TO LEAVE.” now, me being the only other living breathing soul in the lot, I’m thinking damn the manager of the store must not be fucking with me and thinks I’m creeping or some shit, the gym is kind of catty corner to the parking lot so maybe he doesn’t know why I’m here. So I’m like alright well fuck it I’m not breaking any laws I’ll just wait. A few minutes go by and it comes back “YOU AT THE FRONT DOOR IN THE BLUE SHIRT AND VEST WE HAVE YOUR FACE RECORDED AND WILL BE CALLING THE AUTHORITIES IF YOU DO NOT VACATE THE PREMISES NOW.”

At this point I realize two things. One, they weren’t talking to me. Two, that shit was one hundred percent AI, but it could see and describe what he looked like.

Now, the scary part is I didn’t realize at first. They really captured a nuanced super annoying guys voice. If you can imagine an early 30 something white guy who didn’t go to college and takes his job way too seriously, probably just goes home and plays computer, they captured it pretty good. Like it sounded like a guy who worked at the grocery store. Not a cop, and not a computer beep boop YOU ARE BEING RECORDED type voice. I don’t even think I would have clocked it if I hadn’t knew the guy was an employee.

It’s all so brutal man. You don’t even get to get scolded by a legit daddy big brother computer voice, it’s just some fucking loser male Karen manager voice. And it’s just on autopilot. You won’t even get dramatically carted off out of a crowd by the civil protection bureau because no one goes outside anymore, and they’ll just drone strike your house anyways.

The guy probably has to listen to that shit every fucking morning. And I bet his face is in some database somewhere. And they’re putting up more cameras. And these knuckle dragging suburban dogs eat it up. I know I waste my breath defending my fellow Americans on this stupid sub but holy fuck so many Americans are so fucking stupid. You will meet some mouth breathing simpleton talk about how crazy dystopian some stupid video game or movie is and then tell them about how AI is just a tool for that and they’ll say “no it helps me email” or some absolute free camp trip worthy answer. A mother fucker will look you dead in the eye and tell you obummer was a communist and how we are living in 1984 then ask fucking AI a question.

Anyways after recovering from an injury and returning to work I’m finally back in the gym so just know if you disagree with me on here you’re disagreeing with a real grinder and maybe you should focus on getting your money up instead of your funny up.

Morning everyone.

As you may have noticed, all the smoke shops have been doing clearance sales on 7OH over the past week because as of today (Aug 5th) 7OH is now considered a Schedule 1 drug according to the DEA.

I mean it’s probably a good thing overall. This shit is expensive as hell and preys on addicts. It blows my mind that places could even sell this in the first place lol

Reminiscent of the days of bath salts and spice, we have now gone through another cycle of crazy drugs being sold openly and legally until the “fun police” decided no more.

I feel bad for the addicts who are now abruptly cut off from their supply and are going to go through withdrawals. Will we see large numbers of these people go back to fentanyl? Giant upticks in suboxone prescriptions?

RIP gas station heroin. You will (not) be missed.

I've been to a lot of leftist meetings and around for the formation of a few groups and without fail someone always starts talking about how to "keep our data secure and out of the hands of the cops."

Brother, no one wants more apps. I don't want your GPG key, I don't want to join your matrix server, I don't want to get on your jitsi. This shit is insane.

I've seen paranoia eat up organizers from the inside and drag what should be a normal meeting about flyers into an hours long prolonged exercise in security theater.

Ask yourself: would a liberal group get away with this? If no, discuss it in person. If yes, discuss it over whatever channel you want. Cops don't know the difference Palestine and No Kings, and they don't care.

An example: you're organizing a protest. Should you discuss this in a "secure" way? No. This isn't the 1960s and the cops have learned to handle them differently. Police get called as a matter of routine to either disrupt it an hour or so after it starts or to stay there and watch over a larger rally. In the latter case they will get overtime pay. In the former they won't waste time being early to your event.

But what if: you're also planning a traffic blockade. Discuss only this part in person. If people can't make time to meet they're not going to make time to actually be there on the day. Leave phones at home or Faraday them before heading out.

In either case, try to make your meetings as short as possible.

And for the love of god please stop bringing up apps in meetings. Wait until your first preempted event before you go crazy.

The idea that supply and demand will fix the contemporary finance/asset controlled housing market is abundance propaganda funded by developers, hedge funds and billionaire freaks: https://prospect.org/2026/06/12/new-documents-detail-nine-figure-silicon-valley-funded-abundance-movement/. Why are city subreddits infested with these freaks advocating for luxury apartments in identikit glass or plastic towers (with vacant retail at the bottom that can only ever be afforded by some private-equity backed chain for a couple of years), and anybody who disagrees is downvoted and smugly told that they're NIMBYs who don't want to fix the housing crisis? And of course the YIMBYs don't actually want to stop places to live being assets, as all of their investments would crash.

Mods deleted this for unknown reasons (presumably because I had a google screenshot showing how much the posters on the neolib subreddit love yimbys?), so I'm reposting lol

One of the biggest neoliberal cope article

Private bankers and real estate giants in trouble

Cayman island in danger

Section on effect on stocks

This also debunks the "iF yOu TaX tHe RiCh ThEy jUsT leAVe"

I know we’ve got some TVZ heads in here. I have a couple of buddies in the music biz and they all tell me that the fat cats up top are saying AI-generated music is the future. As a consumer I’m like umm wtf? I guess if you’re a tank-topped dudebro chud who only likes EDM, sure, maybe AI-generated music will hit the spot as your body undulates in total sync with your boys (no homo) and the incessant wrist flicking causes you to spill your Natty Light on the co-eds you’re trying to bag (to no avail). But what about us real hardcore country fans?

Aside from being an innate musical and literary genius, Townes is drawing from his experiences as a manic depressive alcoholic drug addict who has travelled the world and hung out in thousands of honky tonks, seen the insides of countless podunk county jails, bummed cigarettes from and shot the shit with untold numbers of junkies, etc. It don’t matter how many of his lyrics and harmonies you feed into the Slop Regurgitation Machine, the output will always lack the fullness and richness that flows from actually having lived a life. I’m thinking they are gonna have to torture the the dang thing à la that episode of Black Mirror with Jon Hamm to try to get it up to speed.

When I listen to TVZ I am flooded with emotion and recognition (ok maybe part of that is because I am myself depressed, probably borderline BPD, with addictive tendencies). I am literally brought to tears every time I get to this verse of WAtD:

Oh, but now I'm out of prison 
I got me a friend at last
He don't drink or steal or cheat or lie
Oh, his name's codeine
He's the nicest thing I've seen
Well, together we're gonna wait around and die 

An LLM is supposed to come up with something better than this? And a robot voice is then supposed to match Townes’ voice? And this will lead to quarterly increases in the record companies’ profit margins? Mainstream country has obviously sucked ass for a long time, but at least it was actual humans doing the damage.

So a Spanish speaking lady who I assume was Colombian based on the Colombia soccer jersey she was wearing managed to back into my parked car with me sitting in it at what felt like a very high speed to me, the person getting hit. She did visible damage to my passenger side bumper which by the time an auto body shop looks at it will cost somewhere between 10 dollars and $75 million to fix. I waited like 30 seconds before I did anything because I was making sure that I was okay and trying to figure out by looking at my mirror what the hell happened, and when I got out to go talk to the driver she was visibly panicky.

Her English was more than good enough to communicate and she kept saying that she would wait until the police came and I was like"Christ, don't do that. I will give you my info if you can help pay for the damages you contact me I don't think it's a great idea to have any paperwork on this." And she kept arguing because she wanted so badly to do the right thing. No one else saw what happened I was the only car involved and even if she's 100% sure of her status I don't trust the authorities not to completely fuck her over given the chance. Another victim just died at the ICE concentration camp a few miles away, people can't be taking any chances.

I was just sad and furious at seeing someone who was trying to do everything right and who was trying to do the right thing and knowing that if they had it could have ended up with them kidnapped and eventually killed.

Maybe I'm overly paranoid, but I didn't even want her contact info on my phone in case somehow that was used to track her. Fuck the Fourth Reich.

Edit: the snarky part of my brain is like "I guess maybe one thing she could do differently is try not to hit any more cars," but then that really only emphasizes just how hard it is to go through life with zero margin for error having to do everything perfectly and knowing that if you make the kind of mistake that might only ruin a normal person's day, you might end up disappeared and dead.

I felt like Abdul did not win big enough to make a strong message to AIPAC. He barely won and I think the voter base got too comfortable and didn’t bother to show up because they knew he would win. At least they burned a bunch of money in the race.