Normally I don’t like to dive deep into the ugliness o’ politics during the best month o’ the year, October, a time best spent on autumn weather & horror, but recently there’s been an interesting development in arguably 1 o’ the most spine-tingling o’ topics — the current state o’ the economy. ( ¡Boo! ¡Whack Family-Circus-ass joke! ).

CNN, desperate to get their 15 seconds o’ fame for clicks & hits in the same way Jessica Simpson did decades ago or the modern celebrity moron, the average Republican, does today — saying something incredibly stupid & getting e’eryone to make fun o’ them — cooked up something fun for us tonight:

“Here’s why the shockingly good jobs report is going to cost you”.

“You” is the word that deserves scrutiny. A common misconception that economists & people who pretend to know anything ’bout the economy ( ¡like me! ) imply is that there is some magical economy that gives e’eryone what they want. For instance, I would question the idea that someone who would otherwise be unemployed not being unemployed endured any cost by having the means to keep themselves from starvation. But people who have plenty o’ money in the stock market are costing a lot by having that stock ticker be orange.

Here’s why: Inflation is still biting. Prices continue to rise faster than anyone would like. Although annual price increases aren’t in wild-runaway mode like they were when inflation was above 9% last year, inflation is still above 3%, which is unhealthy for the economy, according to the Federal Reserve and a number of economists. (The Fed believes 2% inflation is ideal over the long haul.)

What I want to emphasize most with this paragraph is that it feels like ’twas written by an elementary school student, with its short, choppy sentences that assert simplistic claims that don’t fit the true complexity o’ modern economics. Saying that “prices continue to rise faster than anyone would like” is as meaningful as saying “there are mo’ deaths in the world than anyone would like”: any inflation greater than 0 is going to rise faster than anyone would like — that doesn’t mean it warrants comment.

The funny thing is that e’en someone who knows nothing but economics but takes CNN @ their word, but can compare #s, can see the mismatch o’ CNN’s tone & what the #s tell: inflation went from a whopping 9% down to “above 3%” ( I had to go to a better news source, NBC News, to find the actual # 3.7% ), which is the best way to try to imply a # >= to 4% without outright lying, which is a whopping 1.7% greater than what the Federal Reserve — here called by their rap name, “The Fed”, ’cause CNN is too down with the sickness to use their stuffy full name that might go o’er the heads o’ the teenagers they’re desperately trying & failing to get to read them — considers “ideal”. I don’t know ’bout you, but inflation going down from such a historical high — 7% greater than “ideal” — to just ’bout a % point or 2 ’bove the “ideal” without hurting the high employment level or rising wages sounds miraculous to me. In fact, it sounds better than the usual pattern since the 70s — coincidentally, when we started taking the monetarist witchcraft “the Fed” tries & laughably fails with time & ’gain — o’ stagnating wages that can’t keep up with e’en the small “ideal” inflation.

Economists had expected the data to show a 3.6% overall increase in inflation compared to a year ago. Annual inflation has now ticked up two months in a row after 12 consecutive months of decline.

These 2 data points — 1 o’ which is just empty tarot-card reading from economists, who tend to acknowledge that economic science is not developed ’nough ( & probably ne’er will be due to the unpredictability o’ humanity & the “observer effect” o’ economists’ predictions being loudly announced to e’eryone thru the media tampering with results ) — don’t connect, since they use completely different time units, the latter o’ which is vague. ¿Who cares if annual inflation has “ticked up” some vague amount 2 times in a row? ¿Is the amount “ticked up” a lot or a li’l? ¿& how would it be better if ’twere 2 months broken off by other months. Anyone who understands basic math knows that consecutive months vs. split-off months wouldn’t affect the sum — which is what the former data point references. ¿Does the 2nd data point add up to the expected o’erall 3.6% increase? We don’t know, ’cause CNN for some reason is trying to give us a fun Halloween mystery by not giving us specific #s. Luckily, as mentioned earlier, a better news source was less interested in Encyclopedia Brown puzzles & just said 3.7%, which, to be fair to economists, is remarkably close to expectations. We should give them all that stuffed carnival panda as a sweet reward.

When you see gas prices at $3.75 on average (and above $4 in plenty of places across the country)…

Hold on — gas prices are that low. $5 gas prices were normal a decade ago. I’ve ne’er in my life seen gas lower than $3.75, certainly not any time in the 21st century. I would expect it to be $8 a gallon by this point — specially since what with gas production literally destroying the planet, I would expect there to be, you know, tax penalties to keep people from buying this shit & helping to destroy the planet.

…and a restart to student loan payments for millions of Americans, that’s why a majority of Americans say President Joe Biden’s policies have made economic conditions worse.

Ah, yes, Joe Biden’s policy o’ forcing students to repay their loans, I remember that. I also remember just 2 days ago CNN themselves mentioning, let’s see, “Biden cancels another $9 billion in student loan debt days after payments restart”. Clearly that’s just a devious plot by Dark Brando the Grando Wizando to lure students into a false sense o’ security before he strikes with surprise loans later. This is what the test broadcast last Wednesday was — those o’ us who believe we had our student loans paid off have now been infected with “swine student loans”, which will be sucked out o’ us thru microchips soldered by Bill Gates himself & into Biden’s secret Marxist pedophile fund for erecting statues o’ Karlos Marukasu e’erywhere — for e’eryone knows that Marx is so sexy that any child who sees a statue o’ him will themselves become erect — ¡e’en those without penises, that red devil is so magical!

That’s CNN’s opinion: very sloppily argued by throwing out a bunch o’ data that doesn’t actually serve their intended conclusion, & some o’ it just straight lies, & saying “that’s why” — the best way to make an argument, I always learned in the ol’ debate class. My opinion, which I would say is backed by centuries o’ gleaned wisdom from experts, is that the reason the average American thinks these things is that they’re uninformed, uneducated morons who jump to “bad economy president’s fault” ’cause that’s the kind o’ best guess you can make when you’re utterly bereft o’ any mental tools for economic analysis. Certainly the legislature ( “¿the ‘ley-jeez-what’?” ) & their barely managing to agree to hold off yet ’nother hilarious government shutdown in the richest country in the world for ’bout a month or so as the final magnum opus o’ politician nobody likes Kevin McCarthy just before he got his face eaten by his fellow leopards & shitposting Democrats had nothing to do with the US’s economy… somehow not being in as bad shape as Europe ( the US is a perfect specimen o’ “failing upward” ). Nonetheless, Americans, ne’er ones to settle for less, have higher expectations & are still debating ’mongst themselves whether or not they might give ’nother chance to the candidate who attempted a dictatorial insurrection, has plans for his next term including indictments gainst all his political enemies & setting up a “gulag” for legal immigrants, & who, those with memory ( not Americans ) remember was the one who exacerbated this whole inflation problem in the 1st place by delaying COVID treatment o’ the nation with his hilarious shitposting on Twitter X.

As prices continue to grow, paychecks are barely keeping pace. They grew 4.2% over the past year, the slowest pace of growth since the early days of the pandemic in 2020.

’Gain, just do the fucking math: that’s higher than the earlier-mentioned inflation #. Wages being higher than inflation is pretty good, considering how stagnant wages have been for the past 4 decades.

Also, I can’t imagine “the Fed” are too disappointed by these #s, as the Federal Reserve’s policy for trying to bring down inflation was trying to bring down wages by, get this, inducing unemployment. ( The fact that e’ery “workable” form o’ capitalism that has e’er existed in the real world involves the government using their vast controls o’ the economy to induce or reduce unemployment is why anyone with e’en the most basic understanding o’ economics finds the ol’ “pull yourself by your bootstraps” idea o’ capitalism to be a laughable fairy tale on the same level as “pray to Jesus for economic success” ).

So a robust job market won’t make most people feel like the economy is strong.

Well, yeah: ¿who wants to go back to work after year long forced vacations due to COVID? I wanna stay home & play Animal Crossing all day.

The Fed is working to slow the economy by hiking interest rates — the only tool it has to fight inflation.

Ah, so you are aware o’ this fact, & thus the previous complaint ’bout wages not being high ’nough completely contradicts this point.

It’s too bad there are no other parts o’ the government, like the legislature, who could pass, like, fiscal policy to help lower-class Americans make up for the greater burden o’ high inflation while waiting for inflation to keep decreasing as manufacturing continues to spin back to life. Nah, they would rather focus their efforts on conspiracy theories ’bout the son o’ the president & his possessed laptop o’ the occult, like any serious government should.

A still-robust job market — see the 336,000 jobs added last month — means the central bank could continue to increase rates without fear of sending the economy into a recession.

“The economy is roaring with the demand for workers literally through the roof,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at FwdBonds, in a note to clients on Friday. “Interest rates are likely to remain higher for longer to ensure the inflation fire is out.”

Educate me, ’gain, on what the “cost” is o’ the Federal Reserve having mo’ room to fight inflation without the fear o’ inducing a recession. I guess if you want recession or are ’fraid o’ inflation going too far down that’s a problem. Or maybe not having a ’scuse for keeping unemployment up is the real problem.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon repeated in recent weeks his fear that rates could go to 7%. Government bond yields are rising to multi-year highs in expectation of rates going up — and loans pinned to those yields, including mortgages and credit card rates — are set to go up, too.

Ah, average American, CEO o’ giant-ass monopolistic bank, will educate me. It sounds to me like this is a big ol’ problem for creditors, — also known as parasitical leeches — not for people who actually work for their money. I guess when CNN said it’ll cost “me”, they meant it’ll cost my bank CEO.

Credit card rates are well north of 20% on average, a two-decade high. People who carry a balance month to month are paying a hefty premium in interest, which means it will take even longer to pay off what they owe.

O, ne’er mind: e’en the leeches are still doing fine. The only people who seem to be doing worse are people who have debts, — people who have been being screwed for eternity, already — & not e’en by all that much, since according to Nerd Wallet, the average rate was 16.44% in 2021. ’Course, CNN doesn’t offer this # as a comparison themselves, since actually informing people is much less valuable than throwing round #s bereft o’ context & using super scary language is much better for rage clicks.

Meanwhile, US mortgage rates climbed to 7.49% this week, up from 6.66% a year ago and the highest level in more than two decades. That has kept the housing market in neutral [ emphasis mine ], keeping the key to middle-class wealth growth out of reach for so many would-be homebuyers.

Man, you’re really convincing me of our dire situation with this neutral housing market. ¿When will someone finally impeach Biden already?

We should never cheer a bad job market. But a job market that has remained this healthy for this long really isn’t excellent news for average Americans struggling to pay their bills. Meanwhile, we remain in a “good news is bad news” conundrum that makes most people feel like the US economy is in a bad spot.

The best part o’ this self-contradicting incoherent jumble o’ a paragraph trying pathetically to work as propaganda is how self-inflicting it is: @ a time when young people are becoming mo’ & mo’ jaded with capitalism & mo’ supportive toward socialism, I can’t imagine that telling people “an economy good for working class people is actually bad” & calling for mo’ unemployment after Millennials withstood a whole decade o’ being shamed for their high unemployment works as a good advertisement for capitalism, nor can I imagine the average worker having a positive opinion o’ self-proclaimed economic experts whose only solution is to throw 2% o’ potential employees into destitution. & people wonder why homelessness is such a problem when it is considered good economic policy to try & force people to be jobless. Bums who beg for money on the streets told to “get a job” should quip back, “¡but then I’d be causing you inflation & costing you e’en mo’!”. After all, it’ll be much harder for you to buy food if you keep having that job that allows you to have money to buy food @ all. It’s almost as if capitalism is an unreasonable “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” economic system where people who aren’t politically powerful have no chance to succeed no matter what they do & offers absolutely no solution to homelessness or poverty & finding some alternative to capitalism is the only solution. That’s the message CNN delivers, anyway. I doubt they intended to — but then, given how incoherent & inane this article was, I don’t think anyone @ CNN are smart ’nough to understand what they’re trying to say.

As a fun bonus, the New York Times tried the same thing, titling 1 o’ their articles “U.S. Job Growth Surges Past Expectations in Troubling News for the Fed”, which sounds like the title o’ a Superman comic. Like what happens a lot in the modern world o’ social media where ol’, out-o’-touch, moderate conservative New York Times editors have their anti-lower-class biases pointed out & ridiculed by the vicious liberal masses, — who nonetheless, are their target audience, & must be fed accordingly, as papa market demands o’ them — they changed the title like Stalin erased Trotsky out o’ those photos. This is the real liberal fascism that, um… that 1 generic conservative whose name I don’t want to look up wrote ’bout.

The Bad Webcomics Wiki is an ancient website I wrote some shitty sprite comic reviews for mo’ than a decade ago, when I was a teenager, before I realized there were better things to spend my time dunking on than middle schoolers trying to babystep their way into learning how to create comics by screwing round in MS Paint ( I now spend my time satirizing people e’en less talented: writers for The Atlantic ). Back then ’twas mostly run by enlightened centrists who thought Jon Stewart was hilarious ( enlightened centrism was ’nother juvenile delusion I grew out o’ ). I haven’t been there for mo’ than a decade, ’cause I grew up ( I’m now the mental equivalent o’ a teenager rather than a 10-year-ol’ ), but apparently sometime in that time the barren wasteland had been taken o’er by Nazis. What’s most bizarre, is they still have the stuff written by the centrists mixed in with the edgelord fascists, like this article written by pro-mole, who seems very strongly to not be a fascist.

Anyway, I’m not interested in the rest o’ Bad Webcomics Wiki, so much as 1 review they wrote for some comic I’d ne’er heard o’ before called Stonetoss, which I learned ’bout from that classic magnum opus o’ the 21st century, this page o’ TV Tropes nerds whining ’bout stuff they didn’t like on the internet. As cringe — as the zoomzooms say — as that TV Tropes page is, I swear to you that the Bad Webcomics Wiki review is much cringier ( I don’t know if the zoomzooms use that word ). This review is the only 1 I know that praises a webcomic — going starkly gainst brand for a website with “Bad Webcomics” @ the beginning o’ its name. During the early years, their saner community ( emphasis on the use o’ comparative adjective, not absolute ) acknowledged certain webcomics like Gunnerkrigg Court or The Perry Bible Fellowship as good, but reflected this view by not making reviews for them @ all, only comparing comics they viewed as bad to them. So this webcomic, despite its generic name, must be amazing to break that tradition. Surely an institute as well-respected as the Bad Webcomics Wiki wouldn’t sully their illustrious reputation by breaking this custom for some lame 4chan meme comic.

Genre: Edgy political and societal commentary (also memes)

This is not a genre.

A lot of people do not like his politics, but it seems to be an even 50/50 split

Which is why this is a bad webcomic, ’cause s’posedly only 50% o’ people support racism, according to the tiny bubble o’ shut-in Kiwi-Farm nerds who are the only people with which this reviewer interacts. That’s some hard overton-window-pushing this reviewer’s trying. Too bad it’ll only be effective for said tiny minority o’ shut-ins that make up this ancient website, who probably don’t care whether or not their political views are popular, anyway, ¿so what’s the point? ¿Wouldn’t it be mo’ effective to sell this as “edgy” if you admitted that this comic’s politics are fringe?

The reviewer is well aware of the fact that many people do not like this comic.

In the past, this website eviscerated someone e’en mo’ if they were aware that their comic sucked, but now apparently it gets you brownie points — if you’re racist, a’least.

To this end, the debate had been ongoing for years on whether this comic deserves a review or not. Basically, consensus seemed to be that this comic – despite being undoubtably offensive to people who didn’t agree with the comic’s politics – then it’s not that bad, even if it’s not all the jokes that Stonetoss cranks out that seem equally… kosher.

Here’s 1 o’ the million times an idiot online mistook “consensus”, e’eryone, for “majority”. So, this comic is not bad, but it’s included in the “Bad Webcomics Wiki”.

This was actually a prime point of contention on the forum, because the consensus seemed to be that we know he’s an edgy boy, we know he fucking LOVES to push buttons, and we know that not all his jokes are funny or in good taste.

It’s almost as if the early 2000s ne’er ended. ¿Who still thinks racism is “edgy” when so many elected officials peddle the same memes? It’s not edgy, it’s boring. It’s a desperate ploy for attention by someone who lacks the genuine skills necessary to garner attention otherwise. It’s a sad attempt to create a nonfalsifiable narrative that anyone who doesn’t like this comic is woke, or whate’er Orwellian buzzword they’re using this week, which is much easier than actually putting effort into your work so that few people want to shit on your comic. So, ¿what is the purpose for “pushing buttons”? Anyone who knows how actually good satire works knows that good provocation has a purpose for making people uncomfortable, since making people uncomfortable is, all else equal, a negative, & it’s self-evidently irrational to intentionally make the world worse — or a’least it’s not wise for society to praise art that makes society worse. But this review ne’er goes into detail on how this “button-pushing” has any positive effect on the world, since it’s much harder to argue that “black people existing” as an “absurd problem” to be “solved” makes the world a better place, as opposed to, say, Jonathan Swift mocking racist Britons for treating Irish people as just a means for their own consumption by taking it to its logical conclusion: there’s a goal beyond just portraying edgy content for the sake o’ edge — he’s pushing Britons’ buttons in the hopes o’ making them rethink their behavior, not just so he can say, “LOL, yur triggered”.

In fact, as we will see, that is very much not what this comic is interested in…

This comic doesn’t have a serial narrative like The Probability Broach, and it doesn’t advocate for pie-in-the-sky utopian politics either.

Those are weirdly specific criteria. I’ll take it “pie-in-the-sky utopian politics” is s’posed to be a bad thing, e’en tho there are plenty o’ well-regarded works o’ art, including the very work that gave us the word “utopia”, that focus on utopias, like, say, Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. Nor does this reviewer define what is or is not “utopian”. If one is sufficiently nihilist, it could be any delusion that the world could be improved in the slightest way.

It’s not pushing religion over science, and while it most certainly mocks a lot of political characters then it does so better than most and while you’re never in doubt when an SJW stereotype is on display, then they’re not equally as whiny as often shown in comics.

I hope they put this garbled mess on the back o’ this comic’s inevitable print copy, as it’s inspiring me to read it right now. This reviewer did a great job o’ showing how it does a better job o’ mocking political characters than “most”, which is just 1 other linked comic review. It’s very impressive that this comic still has lazy stereotypes, but they’re less whiny than most other lazy shit, so this comic is just the slightest ’bove lazy shit, which, when you have barrel-bottom standards, is great. Man, this review really wants me to check this comic out now. Actually, I don’t know what the purpose o’ this review is s’posed to be. Maybe the idea that reviews are s’posed to have a purpose is also “utopian”. It, like this comic, certainly isn’t funny, other than as a target for mockery — & that’s questionable, since this article I’m writing is already starting way slower & is unfunny compared to that cheese wrapper article or that recent article ’bout Ondaatje’s genius dog.

Stonetoss also doesn’t advocate race-war

I take it back: this belongs on the back blurb. “It’s not racist if it doesn’t call for race-war”. ’Gain, desperate-ass overton-window-pushing.

indeed, the closest political comic would probably be Quantum Vibe, though the utopian politics pushed in that does put it a bit off the mark

¿What is with these random-ass comparisons? Looking it up, the only thing Quantum Vibe has in common with this comic is very vaguely being right wing. You might as well compare it to Also Spoke Zarathustra while you’re @ it ( ’cept this comic would look pitiful compared to that actual work o’ art ).

Stonetoss has yet to push a comic that has the direct message of “If everyone converts to my views, the world would be perfect” which is what pretty much ALL other political commentary comics seems to do these days.

This is a very accurate description o’ political art & in no way the lazy exaggeration by someone frightened o’ having their worldview challenged. ¿Remember when Doonesbury spent e’ery comic having a bearded man in an eyepatch shout, “¡O’erthrow the bourgeoisie today & free Switch games tomorrow! Anyone who disagrees wants a world o’ just Action 52s”, on e’ery panel? I mean, that would probably be better — the most brilliant comic in the world, actually. No, much better is just empty nihilism that just mocks for the sake o’ mocking without any meaning ’hind it to make it worth caring ’bout, which is much better than actually wanting to have a positive effect on the world if you take pride in being useless.

See, when it comes to political messaging in the Stonetoss comics, then there often aren’t much.

¡This sounds like a good comic to me!

The comic’s style is more of a “hey look at this stupid thing being done” style, which can then be open to interpretation.

Yes, just saying “this is stupid” leads to much greater philosophical reevaluations than imagining a different political scape. That’s why my dumb blog received a Pulitzer & sci-fi has ne’er been popular e’er.

A few are pretty clear, but many are simply meant to make you think a bit –

Let’s see this comic that’s “meant to make you think a bit”:

Ah, yes, the most obvious joke you can make ’bout popular meme for people who aren’t interested in studying actually intellectual endeavors, NFTs, made by an idiot peddling NFTs in their blog below. & by “joke”, I mean lame propaganda point peddlers make. Yes, NFTs are just like the Mona Lisa — ’cept their art looks like shit, are made by talentless hacks, aren’t e’en the art themselves but just a made-up currency that represents them, & are artificially scarce due to stupidity, rather than genuine technological limitations, & are bad for the environment. Yes, this makes you think a lot if you’re ignorant o’ basic economics & have ne’er heard o’ “artificial scarcity”, “conspicuous spending”, or “pyramid schemes” & are ignorant o’ the computer science ’hind NFTs & how they differ from handcrafted paintings… in e’ery way imaginable. If this creator were actually socially competent they would’ve compared it to something mo’ equivalent, like royalty titles or having a star named after you.

of course, to some that is a high crime on its own if they don’t like you weighing both sides of a debate equally

¿What both sides? This comic just shows 1 side: pro-NFT. Not only is it just 1 side & a dumb side, it’s 1 where the artist clearly has a conflict o’ interest since they’re selling NFTs. Yes, political comics are much better if the artist is materially biased, rather than just ideologically biased.

As for the Stonetoss comics themselves, then the format hasn’t changed since its start – it’s usually a simple strip or page, with a clear setup and punchline.

“This comic strip is, indeed, a comic strip”.

On quite a lot of forums, and various subreddits, especially ones that discuss politics, his comics even tend to harvest the occasional bit of praise – because you don’t have to be a political extremist to enjoy this comic.

No, just a mentally-mediocre conservative. ¡Ha, ha, ha! ¡Leninists read Das Kapital & libertarians read The Road to Serfdom! ¿What’s tha deal with dat? ( This is unfair slander gainst laissy libertarians that they read a much mo’ simpleminded work: a’least give them the credit o’ reading Human Action ). This idiot can’t e’en stereotype right: ¿all those young lefties watching TV? Nobody below the age o’ 30 watches TV sets, & they certainly don’t get their news or politics from TV, ’less they’re zoomers unlucky ’nough to live in such a flyo’er o’ flyo’er states that they don’t have internet. C’mon, all you had to do was replace TV with Twitter “X” & it a’least would’ve been kinda believable if you’ve ne’er met actual zoomers, like the bitter ol’ person who writes this comic.

Plus, look @ the hypocrisy o’ this criticism, coming from a political webcomic — presumably where the people reading this comic are getting their politics. This comic sure as shit doesn’t reference accredited academic theories or statistics ( neither does The Road to Serfdom, but that’s a different story… ). This comic is straight-up insulting its own audience as left-libertarians & its audience lacks the bare minimum self-awareness to notice — this reviewer in their novel jerking off to this comic certainly doesn’t bring it up.

This reviewer failed so hard to find examples o’ “smart” people who like this comic that they had to use the same example for 2 different links with the desperate hope that their lazy readers wouldn’t bother to check them both — & worse, the people who vouch for them are idiots who care ’bout the pseudoscientific “political compass” — clearly a subreddit full o’ modern-day James Baldwins here. I’m so much mo’ interested in making sure my beliefs are properly categorized on a grid like RPG stats or whether they’re “woke” or “based” than examining how political beliefs & actions affect different peoples’ material lives in concrete ways, since I, too, am a socially-stunted STEM-lord coddled middle-class white male shut-in who has ne’er actually had to deal with the real world.

But does that mean that everything is honky dory and there’s nothing to debate here?

No, there’s nothing to debate, ’cause this comic has no depth. If you have the brain o’ a child, you giggle @ the mean ol’ SJWs trying to ground you from Twitter “X” as if you just snuck a cookie from the cookie jar before dinner, & if you have a brain, you cringe the minute you look @ this comic’s generic tacky artwork.

( Laughs ). I just noticed “honky dory”. “It’s a reference to how great white people are, ¿right?”.

No of course not. Stonetoss LOVES to court controversy and vigorously fucks with all kinds of sacred cows.

See, that TV Troper was wrong: The Bad Webcomics Wiki did find a furry comic they like.

¿Have I mentioned how eDGy this comic is? ¡It’s so edgy! ¡Look @ how it attacks these things that millions o’ works attack that I also hate so I feel no discomfort seeing it attacked, just like e’ery other comic!

See, I find it funnier that this reviewer is mo’ triggered by comics that actually wish for a better world than lame racist jokes that were ol’ mo’ than a century ago.

This is where most of his critique also comes from, but again it all primarily falls back on whether or not you agree with the political messages being put forth

Yes, that’s how you rate comics if you’re a moron without any critical thought & just chose your beliefs based on which “side” has the dankest memeface. People with any semblance o’ an education can analyze a work by how effective its communication o’ its ideas are, how innovative its jokes are ( none in this comic ), or how accurate its claims are, since, despite what this reviewer, whose only means of obtaining info is lurking forums full o’ 14-year-ol’s, there is this scientific method for determining what is unquestionably true & made-up lies.

The comics that get the most critique are likely the ones where he pokes fun at jews… thing is, we’re not talking swastika-waving bullshit here.

If you criticize Jews as an entire group as if they are a borg & not as distinct individuals who happen to be Jews, then, no, that is “swastika-waving bullshit” — it’s just an e’en worse kind that’s too chickenshit to admit it.

His very first one is about how quite a lot of jews are very rich, and the description of said comic, he links to a Jewish professor who talks about the social pressure in Jewish communities for getting a good education and focusing on upward social mobility, pointing out that 48% of American billionaires are Jewish. This starts a long line of comics where Stonetoss simply spouts what is often called “hate-facts”. You know, things that are factual, but can be interpreted as hateful depending on your political tastes, even if entirely true

“It’s true if a badly drawn comic or 90s-era websites say it’s true. No, I’ve ne’er read a single academic book. I trust randos online o’er those evil SJW intellectuals”. The 1st comic makes a joke that white privilege can’t exist ’cause many billionaires are jews ( which, e’en if ’twere 48%, is still a minority ), a “fact” that only works if you believe no Jews are white, which is only a “fact” if you’re a Nazi with inaccurate racial views, like that dumbass honkey Hitler who thought crackers were Aryans. The other 2 comics don’t link to any facts @ all: the 1st ’bout some imaginary trans battalion is incomprehensible to me ’cause I don’t share this comic artist’s arbitrary bigotry. ¿I guess ’cause 40% o’ trans people have attempted suicide ( I found this stat myself; this comic doesn’t link to it & could be talking ’bout something else, ’cause it’s shittily written ), ’cause suicidal people are “weak”, that means trans people are “weak”? I guess ’cause white men are the most likely to commit suicide, that means white men are the worst people to have as soldiers & the weakest people in the world. The 3rd comic has the “irony”, where someone with wacky pink ponytail, which is the universal sign for gay femboy wokester, tells somebody to educate themselves — ¡e’en tho they already are by reading FBI statistics! Reading biased statistics by an authoritarian force is the best way to educate yourself: that’s why I only trust publications by the Chinese Communist Party to get all my information. Nothing’s edgier than shilling for the most powerful government in the world. This comic writer’s obsession with “facts” — statistics detached from context — only further solidifies that this comic is written by a STEM-lord shut-in who thinks cobbling together whate’er jumble o’ isolated facts back up their bizarre conclusions is an oracle o’ truth, not what most scientists would call, “cherry-picking”.

…and its comics like that which Stonetoss fucking loves to crank out – because they make you think.

Imagine how embarrassing it must be to admit out loud that you’re impressed by the most cliché, simplistic agitprop.

Worse yet, he’ll try to make you think about uncomfortable topics like circumcision

Nobody cares ’bout this topic but weirdo antisemites trying to score random points.

like the amazingly high suicide rate of trans people

Leftists are perfectly comfortable acknowledging that bigoted tyrants incite suicide in trans people & that the best way to bring down this stat is to be tolerant o’ trans people, who provide value to society, & be intolerant o’ bigots, who only sow conflict & are no value to society @ all.

or mocking how pride parades in many places have become fetish displays

“Fetish” is literally just “non-normal sex”. A sad, sheltered, boring person being triggered by anything out o’ their closeted Mormon community is mo’ a problem on their end than the problem on gay people engaging in cool experimental kinds o’ sex. This artist’s emasculation in the face o’ gay people who can actually get sex is far from the W they think it is.

& looking @ the comic, that’s not what it’s ’bout. It puts words no gay person has e’er said, a gay person s’posedly rebuking a white person for wearing a shirt that says “It’s Okay to Be White”. ’Gain, this comic artist is a socially-stunted STEM-lord who doesn’t understand context ( or pretends to be this dumb to trick actually dumb people ), which he mistakes for some occult wisdom that the sheeple can’t handle, so can’t comprehend that most people who aren’t aliens don’t interpret “It’s Okay to Be White” @ face value, ’cause its face value meaning is stupidly redundant, but as a dogwhistle for “White People Deserve to Be Treated Better than Others”, that white people have been twisting rights for others as slavery for them e’er since southern slaveholders defined freeing black slaves as creating “white slavery”. Anyone who has e’er read a history book knows this.

or perfectly innocents topics like immigration

’Gain, if you have a problem with France having badass Arabian Nights temples with crescent moons on them, that says mo’ ’bout your bad taste than anything ’bout France. “Lol, ¡variety & mixing cultures to create new things!”. Shocking that such bland art would be made by someone who hates anything new or different. If this comic is effective @ anything, it’s providing a meta dystopian worldview o’ how sterile & brainless art would become if the boorish fascists were allowed to take o’er & suppress actually creative people.

or mass media manipulation.

Middle-aged man screaming ’bout 1984 for the millionth time & Christian bakeries selling gay cakes are the epitome o’ “media manipulation”. Man, this is so smart. ¿Who needs gay shit like Manufacturing Consent when you have based shit like this? If that gay jew Noam Chomsky talked ’bout important topics like gay cakes ’stead o’ commie shit like studies regarding the effects market economics, nationalistic culture, & inherited assumptions have on media tendencies he would be mo’ based & less o’ a woke soy boy.

Of course, some of his comics are so amazingly spot on that its quite eerie.

“¡It’s eerie how these comics match my preconceived notions so well! ¡Get out o’ my head, Randal!”.

This one about male feminists who turn out to be abusive predators have been prophetic in so many ways, considering the number of cases, stories and articles that have come up over the years on that topic.

It’s “prophetic” when you talk ’bout something that’s been well known for years.

It’s almost as if a lot of creeps use feminism to cover their abuse, or to get close to women to abuse them.

It’s hilarious that the only serious sources this article or these comics cite are for liberal opinions that they misinterpret as rightwing ideas. “Duh, if a bunch o’ dudes do skeevy things with feminism, that means feminism is bad, ¿right?”.

This wasn’t the first time his comics turned out to predict the future either, such as his take on the Jussie Smollett hate-crime hoax.

This “fact” was proven by police officers, noted objective sources, & a jury o’ almost-all white people, calling him a liar. You know this is an objective, unbiased comic just telling it like it is when it just assumes that the black guy is lying & the white people aren’t, ’cause, I mean, you know how those black folks be like. Mo’ importantly, you can’t predict something while commenting on it afterward @ the same time. Those o’ us known as “literate” understand that to “predict” something is to discuss something before it happens, not afterward.

All this comic is doing is cherry-picking 1 black guy out o’ hundreds o’ millions possibly pulling off a hoax, in contrast to the mountains o’ historical documentation o’ centuries o’ mass murder o’ black people, recent ’nough that many o’ the perpetrators are still living having not been taken to justice for their acts o’ terrorism, as well as the many recent cases o’ black people being murdered by police ( but those black people were probably on weed, so they deserved it, unlike all the crackers on opioids, who are still upstanding citizens ). But clearly those are insignificant, whereas 1 actor out o’ hundreds o’ millions maybe lying is the worst hate crime gainst white people anyone has e’er perpetrated. ¿Why haven’t we given white people their reparations yet? The great irony o’ these white “supremacist” whinefests is that they do the opposite, insulting white people far harder than leftists do by portraying them as the biggest crybabies e’er. Imagine comparing the average black person complaining ’bout threats o’ violence vs. some fragile white person with a tear whining, <¡That’s nothing compared to the trauma I’ve suffered! ¡Some rando on Twitter “X” said I said something racist gainst them when I didn’t! ¡I am the Emmett Till o’ white people!>.

Or hell, back in 2020 he posted a comic making fun of SJW coffee shops, and just compare that to this video about anti-capitalist coffee shop in Toronto.

Oh, shit, nobody’s e’er made a joke ’bout leftists being coffee-drinking intellectuals before. ¿Get it? They like fancy stuff, but that’s hypocritical, ’cause fancy stuff is bourgeois — that’s what it means, it means “fancy stuff”. “I totally know what socialism is — it’s when the government controls stuff, so these anarchists running a worker-owned business are hypocrites, ’cause no socialist e’er believes in worker-owned businesses, they only love government. My rightwing buddies tell me that’s what it is. No, I have ne’er heard o’ market socialism & can’t tell the difference ’tween market economics & capitalism, & no, I have ne’er read an economics book in my life”.

I always wonder what it’d look like if you were to twist the bizarre extremist purity-contest gotchas that lazy critics o’ socialists — not socialism the economic philosophy, mind you, ( which, like any economic philosophy currently in existence, has room for criticism by people who are actually literate in the subject ), but the people who believe in it, since logic 101 tells you that philosophies live or die not by their own merits, but by how a few cherrypicked people who say they believe in it behave — jump on them toward people who support capitalism in some way — which is probably most people. Imagine wagging one’s finger @ anyone who believes in capitalism in any way who happens to call the fire department when someone catches on fire & being all like, “O, ¿but I thought you loved the free market so much? ¿Why are you mooching off the evil socialist government?”. Nobody does this ’cause it’s widely agreed that people who refuse to touch anything that’s slightly associated with something they’re gainst are neurotics. So, fuck you, I’m gonna keep drinking my Coke while smashing dat capitalism ass & when sexy communism comes on the bourgeoisie’s face & we collectivize Coca-Cola, e’ery worker gets a Coke ( but just 1 — that shit doesn’t just grow off trees & you shouldn’t drink that much Coke, it’s not good for you ). That’s my hashtag slogan: “Peace, land, Coke”.

But I bet he truly triggered so many people with his valiant attacks gainst communism, noted sacred cow in the US. Next he might say something dangerously edgy, ¡like that Stalin wasn’t that cool!

Another topic he absolutely loves to poke fun at is good old political hypocrisy

The linked example isn’t e’en hypocrisy: internet service providers are physical utilities tied up in scarce land grants & require much mo’ capital & are necessary for accessing the internet @ all; social media are basic websites that anyone can make — which is why rightwingers have already made their own bootleg Twitters — & have trillions of other websites as competition if one’s not a lazy, ignorant pleb. This is a common tactic o’ rightwingers with no subtle thought: compare 1 thing to something else completely different in detail, but looks superficially similar. This comic creator is, ’course, too stupid to know the difference ’tween internet utilities, which are concrete, & websites, which are just #s, ’cause they live in a shut-in bubble where e’erything is just abstract ideas. If anything, the net neutrality person should be calling for nationalizing the internet, since it’s an inherently scarce natural utility, not something anyone can just make for themselves. & if this comic were accurate, the net neutrality person would ask the other guy to prove that social media is “censoring” only conservatives or e’en bring up plenty o’ racist idiots screaming racial slurs on social media & the other guy would just raise an eyebrow & go, “C’mon, we all know”, & just end it @ there, ’cause rightwingers assume e’eryone else unconditionally accepts their arbitrary assumptions without evidence.

Sure, its low-hanging fruit, but Stonetoss knows how to make a simple comic strip push an easy-to-understand message that doesn’t necessarily come off as preachy

They’re easy to understand ’cause they’re just simplistic superstitions, like e’erything else by generic conservatives, & it’s not preachy ’cause their conservativism is just empty nihilism.

Mind you, this isn’t to say that Stonetoss wont also mock conservative and right-leaning bullshit

His example o’ “right-leaning bullshit” is white conservatives being somewhat positive toward a black person. “Look, he’s fair & balanced: he attacks both the left & conservatives from the fascist standpoint”.

He was also an early supporter of bitcoin

That’s all we need to know ’bout this comic artist. Just yell, “This comic was written by a shut-in incel who thinks 4chan is real life” repeatedly & you’d get the same idea across.

This is probably less than half this jizzfest for a comic on the Bad Webcomics Wiki. Despite this section being called “Story & Plot & Writing”, nowhere does this reviewer actually discuss writing techniques ’cause they’re too uneducated to know what a writing technique is. They just say “the comic artist makes fun o’ these people, & makes fun o’ these people… ¿Isn’t he so edgy?”. No, he’s fucking boring. It’s ridiculous that a comic as full o’ weird shit as Dominic Deegan has less written ’bout its entire story & writing than this dumb political comic.

The art of Stonetoss is simple, even crude, but over the years he’s built up a solid and easy to read visual language in his comics.

No, fuck off. This art sucks & you have shit taste. ¿What kind o’ fucking losers has Bad Webcomics Wiki become that they’re simping so hard for a fucking Nazi comic?

Despite how similar the faces of his characters often look, then you know that the one with the purple twirly bit of hair is usually some kind of social justice warrior, and so on.

This is ’nother thing Bad Webcomics Wiki would’ve eviscerated before ’twas infested with Nazi teenagers.

It can take reading a few comics to get the full load of references

We get it: you’re uneducated, have not read any real works o’ literature, & are impressed @ the most basic-ass shit.

Another point that Stonetoss should be seriously commended for, is that in his comic he has more or less entirely avoided the sadly common trope in political comics of drawing his political opponents/strawmen in a visually distinctively negative manner.

I’m sorry, let’s go back a few paragraphs:

then you know that the one with the purple twirly bit of hair is usually some kind of social justice warrior

Fascists are such bad liars. I feel bad for any losers who falls for this.

He’s yet to be doxxed, though not for the lack of trying of his hatedom

This doesn’t make any sense: if people wanted to try doxxing him, they would. It’s stupidly easy. Nobody wants to doxx this idiot ’cause there’s a billion o’ them & nobody knows who this idiot is.

Cumclussion

Literally written by a 14-year-ol’.

Basically he’s worse than Hitler.

This is true: Hitler’s existence was actually notable.

A total ultra-Nazi who must be hounded off the internet, at least if you go by his hatedoms on Reddit and whatnot.

Stonetoss’s haters are legion – make no doubt about it.

Shut the fuck up. Nobody cares ’bout you, loser. Get o’er yourself.

This review was obviously written by the person who made the comic itself — ’nother thing that would be grounds for eviscerating this idiot & wiping this shitty review off the internet in the past. I ne’er thought something like the Bad Webcomics Wiki, a website whose logo parodies Goatse, could “fall off”, but if the internet proves anything, it’s that there’s no nadir.

As oft, there is a much better example o’ what I’m doing here, so I wasted your time ’gain.

If you want a perfect example o’ what the Orwellian form o’ “freedom of speech”, — a concept whose vagueness makes it perfectly flexible for manipulation to only apply to one’s allies and not one’s enemies — the recent Stanford controversy where students protested an advertisement speaking event Stanford held for a conservative judge, — the only details for which are highly emotionally-charged & politically-charged “they said, she said, he said…” which are useless for any attempt @ an “unbiased” interpretation o’ what happened, beyond unquestionable proof that the judge himself acted unprofessional & insultingly toward the students, so, @ worse, ’twas some tit-for-tat energy — which, predictably, led the amazingly-interconnected rightwing media, so similar & generic they may as well be AI generated @ this point, to parrot the same whinging outrage, which also, predictably, led Stanford to bow down in obsequiousness, as self-defeating liberals always do, & forced all their students, e’en those not involved in the protest, to waste their time attending a freedom o’ speech lecture — a good lesson on how they’ve wasted their money on an institution whose inflated price is based purely on its superstitious aristocratic reputation, not genuine materialistic value, as this university is apparently so legally incompetent that they don’t realize that freedom o’ speech is a regulation on governments repressing speech, not ordinary students protesting a speaker @ a private event, none o’ which involves the government @ all, other than that a member o’ government is the speaker, the s’posed victim. I guess in Soviet America the 1st Amendment protects the government from having their speech suppressed by the dangerous people. Indeed, many conservative & “libertarian” — who show their true stripes by only defending the speech o’ a curséd government official gainst the speech o’ ordinary people when it’s conservative — commentators point out that this is a private institute as a rebuke gainst the left-wing defense o’ the right to protest, blatantly ignoring the fact that this should obviously nullify the judge’s right to speech just as much. You can tell when someone’s just simping for Trump’s remnant dynasty when they either don’t notice this obvious contradiction or deliberately ignore it & care mo’ ’bout the propaganda points spamming their outrage gives their team. & there’s a surprising lot o’ people doing so ( to be fair, this is probably ’cause most leftists are selfish & don’t want to dirty their dignity by getting involved in this political clickbait @ all & have been deliberately ignoring it ).

What’s most notable, tho, is the response o’ 2 conservative judges to this clownshow: threatening to “boycott” Stanford & not hire clerks from them. What’s interesting is that with all the whining ’bout the fake free-speech violation o’ the ordeal, there’s no protests ’bout this clear case o’ government officials threatening to punish a private institution for its ideological policies — a clear violation o’ the 1st amendment in terms o’ 1 o’ its main goals, preventing this clear attempt @ extortion to try & force this institute to employ policies that these judges want outside o’ law. ’Gain, I want to summarize American “freedom of speech” philosophy to those who haven’t gotten it yet: ordinary people who happen to be leftists don’t have the right to protest governments, but the government, who happens to be conservative, must have their speech protected from the people & have the right to use economic coercion to ensure that the poor government is protected from their unruly public. If these political leanings are reversed, ’course, the philosophy may differ. For instance, I saw no fretting ’bout any free-speech violations with MTG heckled Biden during his speech. ’Gain, this is probably ’cause leftists are too cool & have too much dignity to portray something so insignificant as anything beyond “rude” & conservatives obviously gain nothing by encouraging their own so-called principles to be used gainst them, so they, wisely, either ignored this or reinterpreted their philosophy so that now this case is now an ordinary ( government ) citizen protesting gainst the tyrannical president. Like I said, freedom o’ speech is very flexible & can shift & move depending on the circumstance ( &, mo’ importantly, how it benefits or hurts one’s political allegiance ).

I should add that the judges’ “boycott” is very bizarre: it apparently only includes future students, not current students, which would leave out the very students who protested the speaker in the 1st place. I guess these judges take the ol’ school rule o’ children suffering for the sins o’ their fathers all the way. He also described the protest as “intellectual terrorism”, which is proof that Republicans are mask-off fascists, ’cause that’s the most unironically cliché 1984 cringe bullshit e’er.

The implications o’ this whole ordeal, as well as conservatives’ general whining ’bout “woke” leftists & “cancel culture” are clear: conservatives deem expressions o’ left-wing opinions to be a threat to their free speech, & therefore they must be suppressed. That is the “lesson” conservatives wanted Stanford to take here: the only solution they considered acceptable was that the students who didn’t like what the conservative judge had to say should have just kept their mouths shut & let the conservative monopolize the podium, much as conservatives believe in general that the only acceptable solution isn’t any form o’ compromise, but for the left to bend the knee; & those disruptive anarchists who refused should be disciplined by the institute or that institute will face consequences — they, too, must bow down. This should not be surprising since keen ears will note that when conservatives complain ’bout s’posed free-speech violations, they emphasize their violent hatred o’ leftists far mo’ than any concern ’bout lofty principles. ( There’s also, ’course, the hypocrisy o’ simultaneously banning books in libraries & schools — which doesn’t seem quite so hypocritical when you take as a philosophical a priori that it’s only suppression o’ speech when leftists do it; otherwise it’s just maintaining baseline moral standards — those morals being whate’er rightwing authorities say they are ). When conservatives say they want “cancel culture” eradicated, that’s a dogwhistle for “leftist culture”. It is the left that must be eradicated.

This is how the 1st amendment could easily be interpreted by judges who choose to do so & how a pseudodemocratic country with freedom o’ speech could easily transform into a fascist nation with “freedom o’ speech”. In this scenario, government suppression o’ speech is twisted into preservation o’ ( conservatives’ only ) speech, as the ( leftist ) speech being suppressed isn’t really “speech”, but “disruption”, & we can’t have freedom o’ speech with disruption, so the disruptions must be quelled so the orderly ( conservative minority ) can trade unhinged conspiracies ’bout the invasion o’ the female bathrooms by undercover transcommies have civilized discussions.

Addendum: Judgment Day

Howe’er, I can’t leave it @ that, as I also have to talk ’bout the other hidden philosophical element that many haven’t talked ’bout, the growing divide ’tween the increasingly democratic left & conservatives who still cling to aristocratic “republicanism” — a vague term that has been attempting to reconcile the US’s aristocratic leaders with its democratic populace since its birth. A major controversy here ’mong not just the right wing, but also the “moderates”, is that these disruptive anarchists who listen to that hip-hop & have their pants sagging didn’t just act rudely to a conservative, they acted rudely to a judge. Traditionally, in American media, judges are held in the highest regard & insulting or e’en displeasing judges is grounds for “contempt”, a temporary form o’ weak imprisonment. Daytime television is full o’ shows where straight-talking judges who are ne’er wrong solve the problems o’ their dumb whitetrash & ghetto plaintiffs & defense. &, ’course, the “supreme” court is the highest level o’ law in the land, ’bove the president & legislature, able to nullify laws or actions or e’en invent new defacto laws with no veto power from the other branches, & are also appointed for life — which is to say, they’re dictators. Howe’er, judges have lost a lot o’ prestige in the last few years, thanks to Trump shitting up the court by filling it with particularly imbecilic cronies & unpopular rulings they’ve made ( sadly, not due to the inherent authoritarian nature o’ the US court system ). Since traditionally this obviously antidemocratic judicial system has always been defended on “technocratic” grounds ( & like all “technocracies”, the standards for merit are questionable & largely based on superstitious aristocratic traditions rather than anything resembling science ), this is a major crack in people taking the US’s political philosophy seriously. This has led to a conflict e’en ’mong liberals, ’tween the copium-huffing liberals who still cling to the US’s decaying system, holding the delusion that this s’posedly noble institution s’posedly corrupted by fascism can be salvaged, when it is in fact this institution’s inherent corruption that has helped fuel the rise o’ fascism in the 1st place, & those who actually support genuine democracy who believe in replacing the US’s aristocratic institution with… well, to be honest, like most people criticizing the status quo, what should be the replacement is varied from outright incomprehensible & self-contradictory ( no laws or government @ all, which could only be enforced by the defacto equivalent o’ laws or government ) or very vague ( no solution @ all, just protesting ), to theoretically possible, but unlikely to succeed & would have logistical issues actually making it work ( direct democracy ), to theoretically practical, but difficult to change or replace the law to the point o’ virtually requiring a minor psuedorevolution to carry it out ( elected judges with term limits & veto power o’er their rulings by a’least 75% o’ the legislature, if not just a majority / no judicial system @ all, just a legislature / probably plenty of other solutions I’m not thinking o’ ). As it turns out, trying to fix or e’en just improve a broken political systems, which are complex social mechanisms, specially in a country with 300 million people, is very hard, & unfortunately, ’cause so-called pragmatic moderate liberals still cling to childishly simplistic ideals o’ good & bad — albeit ideals so milquetoast & still so cynical that it makes one wonder what the point is — ( & mo’ importantly, still want to advocate for simple, violent solutions to the problem o’ broken politics in other countries, like China, rather than acknowledge the difficulty o’ improving those systems, as well ), rather than acknowledge that the US has a broken political system that ne’ertheless can’t just be fixed immediately by a sexy romantic revolution, they have to make up whate’er ’scuses they can — usually regurgitating traditionalist cant as if they haven’t been debunked by this point or haven’t become completely irrelevant in the 21st century — to present “their” political system as fundamentally good, just with a few flaws, as to believe otherwise would shatter their view o’ themselves & their role in their society. After all, the propaganda surrounding the American Revolution has embedded in Americans’ minds that idea that tyranny must be fought thru violent, sexy, romantic revolution, an idea that is convenient for war profiteers for gathering support to fund wars for “democracy” abroad. This is a great idea for the average milquetoast middle-class American when it involves other countries, like China, since they’re the ones who have to deal with the violence & disruption, but unacceptable if we include the US, since that would make those same liberals feel morally bound to violently revolt gainst the government ( which would also contradict their already contradictory moral tenet gainst “extremism”, — ’nother vague term that can be twisted into anything — since in their minds violent revolt in other countries isn’t extremism, nor was the original American Revolution ).

Judges have themselves, ’course, reacted to their fall in prestige not with humility, but in typical authoritarian fashion by those born & bred to believe that they have the divinely-given right to be worshiped, by lashing out @ the “mob” for daring to believe they, mere mortals, can be equal to their divine kings. This is what “intellectual terrorism” is: the threat o’ the mob gainst the aristocracy — or rather, the threat o’ democracy. This is specially ironic, given how corrupt the current supreme court is, with Clarence Thomas just recently getting into controversy for accepting undisclosed trips ( gifts ) from conservatives & his refusal to recusing himself from trying cases where his own wife has clear special interest¹. Unsurprisingly, the court’s reaction to this obvious corruption isn’t shame, but the laziest o’ ’scuses — ¿& why not? They’re dictators — they don’t have to defend themselves with words so long as the military will dutifully do so with guns.

The real question isn’t why the courts act this way — it’s obviously in their interest to do so. The real question is why so many “liberals” would defend the “freedom o’ speech” o’ a member to this corrupt, unjust, undemocratic, unmeritocratic, authoritarian institution, who hardly lacks the means to have their voice heard, specially in the courtrooms they control with an iron grip, o’er the rare instances in which ordinary people can have their words heard.

I.

Renowned newspaper, The New York Times, writers o’ such hard-hitting pieces as “Momo Is as Real as We’ve Made Her”, “Need to Find Me? Ask My Ham Man”, & the Pulitzer-winning, “The Benefits of ‘Tummy Time’”, — which was actually a swerve from their opinion 5 years earlier expressed in “’Tummy Time’ May Not Be Needed”, only to come to a happy bipartisan, centrist compromise 2 years later with, “The Truth About Tummy Time”, which has, “So, yes: Tummy time is good — but you don’t need to overly fret about it” as its Google blurb, ’cause, fuck no, I’m not wasting my time reading god damn articles ’bout tummy time like a 40-year-ol’ wine mom — had what experts call “a bitch fit” after 180 o’ their own contributers & GLAAD called out The New York Times for being, what we in the ergot call “transphobic shitbags” for spewing stale superstitious op-eds by credential-less professional randos, while offering actual trans people hardly any podium on which to speak on important trans issues, as well as reminding e’eryone that they were homophobic shitbags back in the 80s — ( but they don’t remind e’eryone that The New York Times also in the early 90s peddled that famous book o’ white supremacist pseudoscience, The Bell Curve ).

Anyway, you came here for the bitch fit, so here it is:

Their protest letter included direct attacks on several of our colleagues, singling them out by name.

This “attacking” — as hypocrites who try to weaponize the empty meme o’ “cancel culture” as a sad, impotent Orwellian political tool to silence dissent call “criticism” — was aimed @ articles whose authors were “outed” by The New York Times themselves on the articles themselves, so it’s The New York Times who were the real doxxers here.

This attempt to twist this letter, which barely focuses on the writers beyond a couple name drops as details & focuses entirely on the scummy machinery that is truly responsible for these articles’ existence, is such a pathetic & transparent digression.

That policy prohibits our journalists from aligning themselves with advocacy groups and joining protest actions on matters of public policy.

You have to admit, executive editor Joe Kahn — ¿am I doxxing him in my hurting his fragile feelings attacking homicidal manslaughter gainst him by revealing his well-known name — has the balls o’ a Fox News anchor to lie in such a transparent way. ¿Who is he trying to fool that no other New York Times contributor has had ties to advocacy groups or involved themselves in politics? For fuck’s sake, the open letter itself pointed out that many o’ the op-eds were by people who were part o’ antitrans advocacy groups — tho unlike these people, who proudly announce their ties to LGBT, ’cause it’s something a civilized person would do, these cowards hide their ties ’cause they know they’re terrible people for it. So what Joe Kahn means is that journalists can’t align themselves with pro-LGBT advocacy groups, but they can align themselves with hate groups. This fits perfectly with The New York Times’s “ethics policy” o’ supporting bigotry. Being gainst bigotry obviously violates that policy.

We also have a clear policy prohibiting Times journalists from attacking one another’s journalism publicly or signaling their support for such attacks.

¿Does Kahn have so li’l respect for his own paper that e’en he doesn’t think it deserves to be italicized, or did the typewriter he wrote this on not have a way to italicize text?

The New York Times, by its very nature, must attack others sometimes, so this “ethics policy” is just “don’t bite the hand that feeds”, which is laughable as an “ethics policy”, but arguably just as laughable as a threat, since that shriveled hand is barely feeding shit with what a slum newspapers are now.

Our coverage of transgender issues, including the specific pieces singled out for attack, is important, deeply reported, and sensitively written.

This is so hilariously sad. It amazes me that people try to portray these papers as serious or intelligent with shit like this. Yes, keep telling yourself in the mirror you’re important, New York Times: a’least there’s 1 person who believes it. What’s e’en better is the middle-school level diction here. ¿“Deeply reported”? ¿What does that e’en mean? That’s what a teenager says when they want to seem like they’re saying something important, but have nothing to say.

The journalists who produced those stories nonetheless have endured months of attacks, harassment and threats.

Which, if this did happen, — Kahn doesn’t provide any evidence, which is par for the course for The New York Times — would’ve happened regardless o’ the letter, since your paper was what revealed their names. It’s cute that Kahn thinks that these contributors imagined up this idea that these stories were transphobic, when many other news outlets were already shitting on you.

Nowhere in the letter is there any advocation for harassment or any interaction with the writers @ all, since, ’gain, it’s aimed primarily @ The New York Times as an institution itself. ¿Does Kahn believe any criticism @ all is advocating violence? The New York Times names several people by name — here’s them singling out Lia Thomas, a trans athlete in their article ’bout the riveting topic fascist conspiracy ’bout the spooky trans people scheming to steal all the swimmer medals with their magical secret muscles; I bet nobody has e’er harassed her ’cause o’ this article.

Like all “cancel culture” hypocrites, it’s 100% “rules for thee, not for me”: I can shit talk anyone else I want, but anyone who criticizes me e’en the slightest is a vicious villain. Like they say: can’t take the heat, get the fuck out o’ the kitchen. The fucking nerve o’ this spineless worm to peddle hateful propaganda & then act indignant when it’s thrown back @ him in the most polite, tepid way possible. What a coddled, spoiled brat. But it’s no surprise: this is the attitude one gets when one is spoiled rich, ne’er having to actually deal with real world problems, living in a coddled bubble o’ yes-men.

The letter also ignores The Times’ strong commitment to covering all aspects of transgender issues, including the life experience of transgender people and the prejudice and violence against them in our society.

Which is, ne’ertheless, not worth as urgent a memo or any leash-pulling on the disobedient worker slaves as polite talkback gainst The New York Times — ¡the real victimized minority!

A full list of our coverage can be viewed here, and any review shows that the allegations this group is making are demonstrably false.

There is no list here, so that is accurate, as The New York Times’s sloppy agitprop doesn’t deserve to be called “coverage”. Considering all the other newspapers — who are in no interest to support the proles, lest their own drones revolt — are pointing & laughing @ your transparent transphobia & you’re the only 1 so fervently defending your own paper, no, I don’t think any review backs you up, bud.

We have welcomed and will continue to invite discussion, criticism and robust debate about our coverage.

’Cept this criticism, ’course.

Even when we don’t agree, constructive criticism from colleagues who care, delivered respectfully and through the right channels, strengthens our report.

“Your criticism is only valid if done privately, so I can squash it & punish you ’way from public view”.

We do not welcome, and will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues on social media and other public forums.

Well, then you’d better go rush in some barely-educated college students, ’cause 180 o’ your employees just fucking did.

We live in an era when journalists regularly come under fire for doing solid and essential work.

“Like these journalists daring to take us to task, & being threatened for not obediently following our corporate line”.

We are committed to protecting and supporting them.

Small print: so long as they only say what The New York Times tells them to say.

Their work distinguishes this institution, and makes us proud.

Yes, it distinguishes you as a bigoted, draconian institute proud o’ your own farts.

What a cesspool o’ a company. In an online era where anyone can bullshit up their own “paper” online or on social media & probably get mo’ views, — certainly anyone who has the clout to work with an o’errated paper like The New York Times — ¿why would anyone subject themselves to being slave drones for these pigs? I hope most o’ these contributors start their own papers & tell The New York Times to stuff it up their ass.

Anyway, I wasted your time, as The Onion, always brilliant, created the best critique o’ The New York Times anyone could.

II.

¡But that is not all! ¿O, you thought The New York Times was done pearlclutching? ¡The New York Times hasn’t e’en begun their pearlclutching! In the 2 billionth installment o’ “Rich White Person Not Loved ’Nough by E’eryone in the World”, The New York Times has made an op-ed dedicated to defending brown-nosing J. K. “Wizards Shit Their Pants” Rowling’s ability to add an extra billion to her Scrooge cash pile, which the vile trans activist antifa commie reds want to sabotage by putting her in the cis gulag where she’ll be forcibly reeducated, as trans people do all the time.

The article starts with a bunch o’ vague platitudes ’bout trans deserving safety, too, which seems nice, ’less you have mo’ braincells than The New York Times’s editors & follow the links to find the extra caveats @ the end that say, “but trans people still get an L”. This op-ed claims that these carefully cultivated quote mines they made up just now are ignored by “a noisy fringe of the internet and a number of powerful transgender rights activists and L.G.B.T.Q. lobbying groups” — truly the spookiest spectres haunting the globe — who actually read the original full quotes & had the audacity to call Rowling a, ¡gasp!, “transphobe”. That’s obviously hate speech & these people should be cast from polite company for their insidious attempts to cancel famous children’s book writer. Hilariously, in the very next paragraph, the writer acknowledges that this “noisy fringe” includes The Leaky Cauldron, “one of the biggest ‘Harry Potter’ fan sites”. That’s an awfully popular “fringe”.

The next paragraph has the predictable topics o’ “cancel culture”, harassment & doxxing, the latter 2 o’ which are, indeed, terrible when they happen to anyone. This article doesn’t have any complaints ’bout it happening to anyone else, tho, — including those “powerful” transgender rights activists & LGBTQ “lobbying groups” ( the 1 type o’ lobbying group The New York Times doesn’t jerk off to ), as well as average trans people who just exist, most o’ whom have far less money to protect themselves than Rowling, nor do they have the arbitrary loyalty that so many o’ these arrested-developed journos still obsessed with children’s books have for this rando celebrity to spew all this propaganda on the public. Moreo’er, it has no relevance to the topic o’ transphobia: if a white supremacist gets harassed, — & some almost certainly have been — ¿does that validate white supremacy? ¿Could Rowling not scrounge together a mo’ educated brown-noser that a’least knows what “ad hominem” attack logical fallacy is & do The New York Times lack the basic high-school education to realize how infantile this article is? ( The answer to the latter is definitely “yes” ). If The New York Times wanted to write an article on the problem o’ harassment & doxxing in general & how it corrodes public debate, that would be good ’nough; but melding it directly into the issue o’ trans issues is peak intellectual dishonesty.

But after that we get the real meat o’ this article: grifting this guest writer’s podcast series, “The Witch Trials of J. K. Rowling”, which is just Rowling whining ’bout how she’s the only person who’s been threatened in the universe. Yes, it’s a refreshing take to look @ the bigot’s perspective on things & completely ignore the most threatened minorities — that’s what we call looking @ both sides, ’cept we only look @ 1 side, since trans people aren’t famous & rich ’nough. Sorry, ¿did I say this was refreshing? I meant refreshing like water that’s been left in the sun all summer long. It would actually be refreshing if The New York Times let the dirty underclasses get a single word in edgewise.

This op-ed writer goes to the deranged comparison o’ Rowling to Salman Rushdie, who was stabbed by an Islamic zealot after an Iranian head o’ state declared a fatwa on Rushdie decades ago. Last time I checked, no trans head o’ state e’er declared an official fatwa on Rowling — in fact, last time I checked, there have ne’er been trans heads o’ state @ all, that’s how big & powerful they are. Still, this is “a forceful reminder of what can happen when writers” are “demonized” — that is, ’gain, criticized. The conclusion is obvious: no one is allowed to criticize writers e’er. If you e’er criticize a writer for their opinion, you’re basically leading them to be stabbed to death. Meanwhile, this op-ed writer, who is clearly demonizing LGBT activists by depicting them as violent maniacs, isn’t endangering them. See, it’s only dangerous when the uppity lowerclasses open their mouths gainst their celebrity royalty; when these cissies slander vulnerable groups in the most cowardly & idiotic ways possible, that’s just “having an opinion”. Only famous celebrities have the right to have opinions; average social-media users should keep their mouths shut & be “civil” ( read: obedient to the upperclass ).

And in Rowling’s case, the characterization of her as a transphobe doesn’t square with her actual views.

If we translate “her actual views” as “my whitewashed version o’ her views manipulated to make her look better than she is”. I find it funny that this op-ed complains o’ censorship when she herself censored Rowling’s real words to cut out the inconvenient stuff, like “[H]uge numbers of women are justifiably terrified by the trans activists” & describes caring ’bout trans rights as “scoop up the woke cookies and bask in a virtue-signalling afterglow” — literally parroting the same rhetoric rightwingers use gainst all women’s rights issues. Granted, it’s easy to see how someone as dense as the average New York Times writer could fail to comprehend the passive-aggression ’hind Rowling’s empty, vague platitudes & skewed perspective, deliberately downplaying the threats toward trans people & deliberately exaggerating the threats toward the most important class, her.

So why would anyone accuse her of transphobia?

Clearly it’s ’cause those people read her full words on trans people & not your carefully-crafted quote mines.

The answer is straightforward: Because she has asserted the right to spaces for biological women only, such as domestic abuse shelters and sex-segregated prisons. Because she has insisted that when it comes to determining a person’s legal gender status, self-declared gender identity is insufficient. Because she has expressed skepticism about phrases like “people who menstruate” in reference to biological women. Because she has defended herself and, far more important, supported others, including detransitioners and feminist scholars, who have come under attack from trans activists. And because she followed on Twitter and praised some of the work of Magdalen Berns, a lesbian feminist who had made incendiary comments about transgender people.

This paragraph is fascinating, since, unlike the rest o’ the article, which has tried to clean up Rowling’s transphobia, here it’s just laid right out — ’long with just plain ol’ sexism. She unironically says Rowling supports “sex-segregated prisons”, like an edgelord on Reddit bragging ’bout how they thought Jim Crow was actually a good thing, O, here comes all the controversy, I’m such an individual. I hope these prisons are “separate, but equal”, since anyone familiar with history knows how well that works. We could just keep e’ery individual isolated & keep down violence for e’eryone, but that would waste too much tax $ on the shameful enterprise o’ treating humans humanely, so let’s just indulge in superstitious traditions & assume that gay people don’t exist & ne’er commit sexual assault — prison rape certainly isn’t a common trope, since separating people by arbitrary chromosome layout genitals I don’t know any coherent way to define genders has done such a great job.

What a “biological woman” is is vague, anyway. ¿Are physically transitioned trans people included? ¿How is this measured? — with the utmost science, I’m sure, as well as genital-groping, ¿since how else would anyone know, &, mo’ importantly, how is it anyone else’s fucking business? This is why society rightfully considers people who obsess o’er “biological” gender fucking gross: it’s literally defining people by body parts that nobody else should be caring ’bout ’less we’re actually having sex. If anything, trans people seem to be mo’ enlightened, since they seem to think beyond just tits & cocks.

& then we have the sudden swerve into an imaginary strawman in the middle with the whole “‘people who menstruate’ in reference to biological women”, which contradicts the immediately preceding statement ’bout trans people being all ’bout “self-declared gender identity”, without any biological element @ all. It’s almost as if Rowling’s being deliberately strict & deliberately gatekeeping people based on criteria that’s simultaneously narrow & vague. Shocking that people might think such a person is an asshole, specially when that criteria isn’t based on any scientific knowledge, — Rowling being a writer o’ children’s fantasy, not a scientist ( & while I don’t have the time to do a thorough investigation myself, most o’ the scientists I’ve seen talk ’bout this issue have a much less hamfisted approach, shockingly ’nough ) — but on this rando’s kneejerk feelings. If The New York Times had any intellectual integrity they would spend mo’ time talking ’bout scientists’ opinions on trans issues, not yet ’nother blowhard celebrity, but we already established that they have no credibility, so here we are.

Then we have “incendiary comments about transgender people”, which doesn’t sound transphobic.

You might disagree — perhaps strongly — with Rowling’s views and actions here. You may believe that the prevalence of violence against transgender people means that airing any views contrary to those of vocal trans activists will aggravate animus toward a vulnerable population.

But nothing Rowling has said qualifies as transphobic.

These statements are contradictory & show that the writer is either so stupid that she doesn’t know what transphobia e’en is or hopes that her readers don’t. This is like people who say, “I’m not racist, but…”. You can assert till your face is blue that you’re not a transphobe, but people are still going to call you a transphobe, ’cause people decide for themselves whether or not you’re a bigot, you don’t get to decide for them. Not only does constantly saying, “I’m not a transphobe” not dispel people o’ that view, it makes the mo’ likely to believe it, since actual “not transphobes” don’t need to constantly declare that they’re not transphobes: they show, don’t tell. In fact, we don’t call people “not transphobes”: we call those people trans supporters, in the same way we use the word “feminist” ’stead o’ “not sexist”. ¿Would Rowling declare herself a trans supporter? Well, that answers the question, doesn’t it.

The “vocal trans activists” part is specially rich. These morons have been filling social media with their mental diarrhea for years, but have the audacity to call other people loudmouths. You wrote a multithousand epic ’bout 1 fucking person, ¿& you’re not 1 o’ those vulgar “vocal activists”?

She is not disputing the existence of gender dysphoria. She is not denying transgender people equal pay or housing.

But she does explicitly support “sex-segregated prisons”, which doesn’t include transgenders — ¡so I guess that means Rowling’s so progressive, she doesn’t believe trans people should e’er go to jail! ¿What bathrooms does she believe trans people should use? If the answer isn’t, “public bathrooms should be broken up into individual stalls for e’eryone ’cause sex-segregated bathrooms is a superstitious barbarism”, then there’s no answer that won’t be transphobic — or sexist, for that matter.

Take it from one of her former critics. E.J. Rosetta, a journalist who once denounced Rowling for her supposed transphobia, was commissioned last year to write an article called “20 Transphobic J.K. Rowling Quotes We’re Done With.” After 12 weeks of reporting and reading, Rosetta wrote, “I’ve not found a single truly transphobic message.” On Twitter she declared, “You’re burning the wrong witch.”

How ’bout I not take pampered randos who have no stake or credentials & ’stead ask actual scientists or trans people. While I’m @ it, ¿why don’t I ask a bunch o’ white male journalists whether or not antiaboriton laws are sexist & read the article, “20 Sexist Donald Trump Quotes We’re Done With”. After all, he tells e’eryone he’s not sexist & believes some women have troubles in their lives ( for instance, he agrees with Rowling on the dangers o’ trans people ), so he can’t be sexist, ¿right? I love the Twitter user who quipped “Serious question: do you think that there are *right* witches that should be burned?”. I should note that having done the most basic research I could bother to do, I found that this rando ran something called “TERF Anonymous”, so clearly they’re an expert on what is & isn’t transphobic, just like I always make sure to ask what the leader o’ the Klan thinks when I think something I say might be insensitive to black people. If this article has informed me o’ anything it’s that all these people being literally murdered for s’posedly being transphobes when they’ve done mo’ for trans people than anyone are laughably terrible liars.

For the record, I, too, read all of Rowling’s books, including the crime novels written under the pen name Robert Galbraith, and came up empty-handed.

Yes, that’s the quality o’ Rowling’s writing for you. I don’t know why you’d subject yourself to such torture.

Those who have parsed her work for transgressions have objected to the fact that in one of her Galbraith novels, she included a transgender character and that in another of these novels, a killer occasionally disguises himself by dressing as a woman. Needless to say, it takes a certain kind of person to see this as evidence of bigotry.

Yes, that certain kind o’ person is “not a fucking idiot”, which is a class that, unfortunately, doesn’t include this op-ed writer. ¿What does this transgender character do, by the way? Surely if ’twas a positive representation, you’d be itching to go into details. I’m guessing the fact that you don’t is an indication that you’re hiding very gross transphobic depiction & are once ’gain, what we in the business call, “lying your ass off”.

This isn’t the first time Rowling and her work have been condemned by ideologues. For years, books in the “Harry Potter” series were among the most banned in America. Many Christians denounced the books’ positive depiction of witchcraft and magic; some called Rowling a heretic. Megan Phelps-Roper, a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church and the author of “Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving Extremism,” says that she appreciated the novels as a child but, raised in a family notorious for its extremism and bigotry, she was taught to believe Rowling was going to hell over her support for gay rights.

Hey, look, ’nother irrelevant comparison. ¿& did you know that Kanye was criticized for saying Bush didn’t care ’bout black people? That means people who criticize his flagrant antisemitism are also wrong. Duh, I understand how logic works.

Phelps-Roper has taken the time to rethink her biases.

Yes, now that Rowling’s a bigot, too, she can finally enjoy Harry Potter. ¡Whew! ¡What a relief!

¿What are these “biases”? ¿Being a “Rowlingphobe”? Yes, ¡somebody please think o’ the Rowlings!

She is now the host of “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling.” The podcast, based on nine hours of her interviews with Rowling —

Jesus fucking Christ, that sounds exhausting to listen to. ¿What obsessed neurotic wants to spend 9 whole hours interviewing some rando children’s fantasy writer? She’s not e’en a great fantasy writer. If ’twere LeGuin, maybe — she wasn’t a bigot, for 1.

— the first time Rowling has spoken at length about her advocacy —

What a load o’ horse shit. Rowling has babbled on & on her spicy hot takes on transgenderism for years.

— explores why Rowling has been subjected to such wide-ranging vitriol despite a body of work that embraces the virtues of being an outsider, the power of empathy toward one’s enemies and the primacy of loyalty toward one’s friends.

Harry Potter embraced species-based slavery as “what’s natural for them” & made fun o’ the 1 person who revolted gainst it, had essentialist morality where someone born in a “corrupt” way is naturally evil & people are sorted into the evil camp & born as a bootleg white supremacist ’cause they have an ugly name like “Draco Malfoy”, & has a chosen-1-by-birth protagonist. Harry’s an “outsider” only till his birth superpowers makes him save the day & then e’eryone loves him. Harry Potter is only progressive to the most regressive morons — which is to say, Americans & Britons.

All o’ this is to say, Rowling isn’t a liberal, she’s a reactionary, primitivist, superstitious ( for example, she’s Christian, which is not only superstitious, but inherently patriarchal ). This ’splains her weird “separate but equal” view on gender & her discomfort with “unnatural” genders. Much as she’s uncomfortable with the idea o’ a hero who doesn’t have certain blood make them the chosen 1 or their name indicate how bad they are, she’s uncomfortable with humans taking control o’er their own gender. Furthermo’, her weird obsession with segregating traditional women — a better term than “biological” women, since there’s no science ’hind her conception o’ “real” women, only ol’ superstitions largely inspired by The Bible — & men: unlike materialist leftists, who rightfully view male supremacy as not being inherent to men’s physical gross penises but to the artificial nature o’ their superior political & economic power, which is in no way integral to their biology, & believe that the solution is to eliminate political & economic equality ’mong genders so that men don’t have power o’er women, Rowling believes there are integral differences ’mong genders that makes true intermixing ’mong them impossible. ( This has the added benefit o’ this neoliberal continuing to support the political-economic system that reinforces this inequality o’ power ).

This is ultimately why I find the idea that trans women are men trying to cynically game the system ridiculous if you have an actual left-wing perspective: men have nothing to gain by becoming women. The idea that trans women want to sneak into women’s bathrooms to creep on women is ridiculous when you realize men have mo’ power to do this than trans women: society has already poisoned the well on trans women ’nough that e’en going near a “biological” women or a women’s bathroom is deserving a lynching; men already have plenty o’ scuses for going into women’s bathroom, including just barging in & not caring ’bout the consequences. The idea that trans women are trying to sneak ’way women’s “benefits” is based on the rightwing delusion that minorities get special benefits; if anything, it should be trans men who are seen as trying to game the system ( tho a liberal should praise this, as men don’t deserve their advantages, anyway ); but this is ne’er the case, for the obvious reason that despite Rowling & other transphobes’ rants ’bout society s’posedly catering to trans people & “erasing” women, the vast majority o’ e’en trans supporters, much less transphobes, still view trans women as separate from traditional women & trans men as separate from traditional men & it’s obvious that trans men will ne’er get the political-economic advantages that traditional men get, & trans women will ne’er get the political-economic advantages that rightwingers claim women have. The unquestionable fact, given all the statistics on how much mo’ likely trans people are to be violently attacked or sexually assaulted, is that trans people are a lowerclass, have-nots, not some privileged class that transphobe liars claim in the same way sexist “men’s rights activists” claim women have imaginary privileges o’er men or white supremacists claim black people have imaginary privileges o’er white people.

If anything, it seems less like Rowling is interested in gender equality, viewing it as futile, as a gender essentialist, & is ’stead jealous o’ the supremacy men have o’er women & want to create a class lower than women to abuse in the same way men abuse women. It’s no different from the bitter poor whites who cling to capitalist economics: they give up on class equality, but since nobody wants to be the lowest class, they sooth themselves by keeping black people lower than them, & thus are horrified by the idea o’ racial equality, leaving poor whites in the lowest class. Trans women being kept separate from traditional women is the only way to keep traditional women from being the lowest class for those too cynical to believe in true equality.

1 o’ the best ways I can frame this is to ask 1 simple question: ¿which side are trans people on? ¿The left or right? ¿Which side is almost entirely gainst trans people? There’s no coincidence: bigots gainst 1 class o’ have-nots tend to hate all have-nots. Rowling only finds the appearance o’ feminism cool ’cause it benefits her; e’eryone else can get fucked. She’s not a leftist, but that all-too-common artificial form, political narcissism; & we’ll not be surprised when later she’s revealed to be hanging out with rightwingers, as political narcissists tend toward the rightwing.

This is far from the only time Rowling has been ’fraid o’ genuine rebellion gainst authoritarianism: ¿remember her hatred o’ actually pro-labor Corbyn ( ’cause he would raise her taxes, unlike nice neoliberal war criminal Tony Blair )? ¿Remember her tepid withering before Israel boycott with weak ( & hypocritical, since I doubt she’d say the same ’bout South Africa under Apartheid ) platitudes?

I should add that “empathy toward one’s enemies” is self-defeating slave-morality tripe typical o’ “turn the other cheek” Christianity that mo’ oft than not enables authoritarians by dampening fighting back — as Jesus did when he tried to distract Jews from genuine revolt gainst their Roman imperialists in favor o’ fake spirituality bullshit & as “centrist” saboteurs do when they continually attempt to needle the left or moderate liberals ( ne’er the right ) into “compromise” or decorum with political opponents interested in neither — tho, also typical o’ Christianity, it’s fake & hypocritical, given Rowling’s deliberate downplaying o’ trans problems for the sake o’ feeding her own pity — & “the primacy of loyalty toward one’s friends” is literally valorizing favoritism, which is contradictory to an equal, just democratic society, which should put the primacy o’ justice o’er giving advantages to one’s buddies. Only backward savages hold these as great philosophical ideals.

The podcast, which also includes interviews with critics of Rowling, delves into why Rowling has used her platform to challenge certain claims of so-called gender ideology

Nobody but transphobes call treating trans people humanely as “gender ideology”. By definition, anyone who has an opinion on gender has some “gender ideology”. As John Maynard Keynes would have said, those who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any gender ideology are usually the slaves o’ some defunct superstitions. So it’s rich — & narcissistic — o’ Rowling to claim that her ideas aren’t “ideology” — they’re just the truth — completely unproven “truths” by a mediocre fantasy writer, not an actual scientist.

— such as the idea that transgender women should be treated as indistinguishable from biological women in virtually every legal and social context.

Rowling doesn’t believe trans people should be treated equally in law, e’en tho equal treatment under law for e’ery human being, no matter who they are, is a fundamental principle o’ liberal democracy, putting her in the similar camp as those principled people who don’t believe women should be treated as “indistinguishable from men in virtually every legal and social context” or that blacks should be treated as “indistinguishable from whites in virtually every legal and social context”, also known as “fascists”. It’s shocking that so many people with firm beliefs in liberal equality & democracy might be disgusted by someone whose political beliefs regarding trans people are fundamentally incompatible with basic liberalism.

Why, both her fans and her fiercest critics have asked, would she bother to take such a stand, knowing that attacks would ensue?

’Cause she’s a grifter who makes money off outrage clicks.

“The pushback is often, ‘You are wealthy. You can afford security. You haven’t been silenced.’ All true. But I think that misses the point. The attempt to intimidate and silence me is meant to serve as a warning to other women” with similar views who may also wish to speak out, Rowling says in the podcast.

None o’ which is helped by Rowling’s attention party, since they’re not the ones who get the 9 hour podcast, she does, & those who do get to be a part o’ Rowling’s boom box are carefully curated to be sure they’re sufficiently in agreement with Rowling on trans issues. If Rowling actually respected other women’s opinions, she would include a variety o’ opinions, including the many women who are trans supporters ( in fact, most polls show that women support trans rights mo’ than men ), not just those “with similar views”; the fact that she only shares her platform with women “with similar views” spotlights that these other women are only valuable insofar as they glorify Rowling’s views. After all, this podcast isn’t titled, “The Witch Trials of Women”, it’s “The Witch Trials of J. K. Rowling”. The s’posed harm to other women is only a problem in how it harms Rowling.

Also, you have literally been saying that Rowling was being silenced, but now admitting that she isn’t being silenced — ’nother transparent lie.

All right, I’m sorry, but I can’t read any more o’ this article. It just goes on & on & on, & it’s nothing but pitying & valorizing & Jesus fucking Christ, Rowling could be Mother Theresa & she wouldn’t deserve so much fucking ego stroking. I don’t give a fuck ’bout what some celebrity actor that you yourself admit is biased ’cause, by your own words, their “careers Rowling’s work helped advance”; I don’t care what some other journos in your circlejerk say. Nobody likes journos or care ’bout their uneducated opinions. Nowhere in this entire article does this braindead op-ed writer quote a single scientist or cite any actual biological science, despite their gross obsession with strangers’ biology, nor actual trans people. ¿They couldn’t find a single trans person who was, like, “O, Rowling’s not transphobic”? Look @ all the black people or women Fox News can bribe into pretending Republicans aren’t Nazis. Rowling has to be the biggest transphobe in the world if this op-ed writer writing, like, a whole novel as big as Order of the Phoenix trying her best to make this random idiot sound like the world’s savior can’t find 1 trans person to vouch for Rowling.

For someone who talks up what a feminist she is, there is barely any talk o’ anyone other than Rowling & how mean ol’ critics are saying mean things. There are maybe a few carefully curated examples o’ privileged journos — the only class that matters, apparently — having to write for different papers, but that’s ’bout it. As bad as it is for anyone to get death threats from obsessed weirdos, — which Rowling was probably already getting several years earlier after she killed Dumbledore — it seems like skewed priorities to treat it as the biggest issue facing feminism, specially when it’s matched by downplaying & delegitimizing trans-supporting women getting death threats. I guess “feminism” is now “only some women matter”. Women get harassed & threatened for any opinion under the sun, but The New York Times apparently felt like “not treating a vulnerable minority group like trash” was the only 1 worth defending. Plenty o’ women get death threats & gross comments ’bout being prostitutes for talking ’bout birth control health insurance policy; it seems less like Big Trans is the problem & mo’ that there’s a lot o’ gross sexists out there & trans people have fuck all to do with it. ¿But why should The New York Times criticize sexism & possibly offend the many sexists who read ( or write ) their articles when they can attack a much mo’ politically weak demographic ’stead?

Actually, there’s 1 paragraph I want to point out:

Despite media coverage that can be embarrassingly credulous when it comes to the charges against Rowling, a small number of influential journalists have also begun speaking out in her defense. Here in America, Caitlin Flanagan of The Atlantic tweeted last year, “Eventually, she will be proven right, and the high cost she’s paid for sticking to her beliefs will be seen as the choice of a principled person.”

Note I included the link for “credulous”, ’cause it’s important: NPR thinks Rowling sucks, The Atlantic thinks she’s going to be the next John Yudkin. That settles my opinion: NPR is 1 o’ the most informative news shows in the US, The Atlantic is shit not e’en fit for the bottom o’ my boot. Yes, I’m sure Rowling will be vindicated just like that COVID-skeptic economist who thought treating AIDS in Africa wasn’t worth the money will be.

1st, I love the hypocrisy o’ trying to use rando journos’ knee-jerk opinions as shallow as book review blurbs as “evidence”, but rejects far mo’ detailed, wellspoken opinions by other journos as “embarrassingly credulous”. So, the evidence that this opinion is right is limited by the litmus that the people providing the evidence believe this opinion is right. That’s known as “circular logic”, ’nother logical fallacy this uneducated writer & The New York Times don’t comprehend.

¿What beliefs will be “proven right”? This article has been vague & been throwing round words to get round the obvious contradiction ’tween “I’ve not found a single truly transphobic message” & “[H]uge numbers of women are justifiably terrified by the trans activists”. Those beliefs definitely aren’t “trans people are people, too, & deserve to be treated equally under the law”, nor are they beliefs unrelated to trans people, so they’re almost certainly transphobic, & I’m going to bet that they’re not going to be “proven” right in the end, since it’s mostly ol’ boomers like Rowling & this writer who believe it, while millennials & zoomers o’erwhelmingly support trans rights — to the point that despite many o’ them growing up with Harry Potter & worshipping this o’errated series, many have now become jaded o’ Rowling ( for good reason ). Sounds to me like it’s a losing side supported primarily by dinosaurs who will be dead in a couple decades.

Sorry, there’s 1 mo’ paragraph I want to point out:

In Britain the liberal columnist Hadley Freeman left The Guardian after, she said, the publication refused to allow her to interview Rowling. ​​She has since joined The Sunday Times, where her first column commended Rowling for her feminist positions. Another liberal columnist for The Guardian left for similar reasons; after decamping to The Telegraph, she defended Rowling, despite earlier threats of rape against her and her children for her work.

Note to Americans: The Guardian is, as much as revile them, generally considered liberal ( liberal ’nough that, howe’er stupid they may be, aren’t baseless ’nough to cater to transphobes… well, ’cept for that concern troll letter they posted, giving voice to a totally-not-transphobe & not to a trans person @ all, since The Guardian can’t e’en not be terrible in this case ); The Telegraph & The Sunday Times are conservative. Shocking that conservatives are mo’ accepting o’ bigots than liberals. You’d think hard-core feminist J. K. Rowling would be loath to work with such sexists who support abortion limits, but apparently tolerating sexists is better than tolerating trans people. I’m sure this is ’cause leftists are so darn intolerant o’ bigots, unlike rightwingers, who are tolerant o’ e’eryone ( who shares their bigotry ). This isn’t surprising, since, as stated, Rowling’s feminism is thin as thread, & despite the thin facade o’ liberalism Rowling wears to attempt to be hip with the millennials, — which has stupendously failed with e’en their masses o’ raving Harry Potter fans feeling alienated from her transphobia — her integral philosophy is inherently conservative in its reduction o’ humans to biological forms & reduction o’ morality into simplistic biblical ideals with no basis in complex concrete reality.

Also, I wasted your time ’gain, as this article can also be summed up better in this simple comic.

So we have 2 articles that are full o’ lies so transparent, they must be made o’ glass. This is no surprise from such flagrant liars as The New York Times, a newspaper only for the most gullible o’ pseudointellectuals.

As someone who has written a review or 2, I’m fascinated by the art o’ reviewing in & o’ itself: not just the conclusions they set out, but also, specially, the arguments they set forth to try & back up those conclusions & how persuasive they seem to me. This is why I’ve written a few attacks gainst reviews in which I agree with the conclusion, such as an inane praiseworthy review for my favorite video game, Wario Land 3. This comes from my schooling, which ( probably to avoid getting sued for potentially violating freedom-o’-speech rights ) was openminded ’bout just ’bout any kind o’ conclusions, no matter how revolting, so long as one made a sophisticated attempt @ backing one’s arguments.

Thus for today I will go all the way & look @ reviews for a book I’ve ne’er read, some 2021 books called “Sorrow & Bliss: A Novel”. Yes, it really has “A Novel” as the official subtitle, & no, I have no idea why.

The only reason I e’en checked out this book was ’cause I found it on some list I found on Google that some rando named Steve Donaghue made o’ what he considered to be the worst fiction books o’ 2021:

In case so many of the rest of the books on this list haven’t given readers enough anti-science egomania, this idiotic, carpingly condescending story of a woman with a “mental illness” that mainly seems to turn her into a too-online Twitter-hole ought to make up the difference.

This is an all-too-common example o’ 1 o’ my least favorite types o’ terrible reviews: 1 that focuses so much on conclusive opinions & not ’nough on textual evidence or examples &, worse, is so vague in its criticisms that e’en after reading the review I have no idea what kind o’ book this e’en is. Granted, less than 50 words is way too short for an adequate review for anything worth reviewing, since it leaves no room for detail. I think, ironically, the person who wrote this review is “too-online”, as he assumes I’m familiar with whate’er Twitter bullshit he’s vaguely alluding to. Unfortunately, beyond copypasting the poems I post on this blog into Twitter with a grunt & then leaving ( which I’ve stopped bothering to do now that I’m convinced Musk will be the death o’ it ), I don’t do hardly anything on Twitter ( & I suspect hardly anyone will within the next 5 years thanks to Musk ), so I have no idea how this “Twitter-hole” ( ¿why is there a hyphen there? “Hole” is a separate word, not a suffix ), nor what “anti-science egomania” this book has or why this reviewer puts scare quotes round “mental illness”. ¿Does this reviewer who tries to imply that he’s pro-science deny the existence o’ mental illnesses — which is to ask, is this reviewer a psychology-denying crank, which is certainly not what I or any civilized human being would consider “pro-science”?

Ultimately, this review is just a bunch o’ cursing disguised as intellectualism by the use o’ vaguely-alluded implications. Being “anti-science”, an egomaniac, carping, condescending, & “too-online”, do, indeed, sound bad, but one can’t be sure if they truly are bad without understanding how they are these things & what the reviewer thinks makes this book “anti-science” or what he interprets to be an example o’ the vice o’ being “too-online”. This is a common tactic for people with unpopular opinions who want to disguise their unpopular opinions as general-held sentiments. Thus, “believes that depression is a real mental illness”, which is something with which all civilized people agree, is turned into a generally-hated dog-whistle “anti-science” much in the way rightwingers turn “treats black people humanely”, which, ’gain, all civilized people think is good, into “woke”, which sounds bad & ridiculous, e’en if most couldn’t tell you what it’s s’posed to mean.

Tier: D

So intrigued by this antireview that failed to give me any information, but, ironically, made me mo’ curious to see what kind o’ book would inspire this vague mess o’ ideas, I had to look up the book on Amazon — specifically its blurb.

In this reviewer’s defense, while I must emphasize ’gain that I have not read this book & cannot adequately review it myself, the blurb doesn’t inspire confidence in me. I can definitely say that the blurb is poorly written:

Martha Friel just turned forty. She used to work at Vogue and was going to write a novel. Now, she creates internet content for no one. She used to live in Paris. Now, she lives in a gated community in Oxford that she hates and can’t bear to leave. But she must now that her loving husband Patrick has just left.

A common vice o’ modern literature ( that is literature o’ today, not modernist literature, which is some o’ the best literature out there ) is relying on childish choppy sentences. This paragraph is particularly fragmentary, since the different sentences don’t e’en connect. Most o’ this paragraph is empty details stripped o’ any importance. “She used to work at Vogue and was going to write a novel”. Cool. ¿Who cares? E’eryone is “going to write a novel”, & writing a book ’bout a tortured “genius” middle class white person struggling to become an uppercase-A “Artist” is the most cliché & uninteresting concepts for a book. Meanwhile, bringing up that our protagonist used to live in Paris, but now lives in a gated community, which she hates, but can’t bear to leave, is some unironic 1st-world-problems & exhibit #200,000 o’ how detached from reality upper-class Americans are. That said, there’s no indication o’ “anti-science” in this book so far; & honestly, the concept o’ a book ’bout someone who “creates internet content for no one” is the least uninteresting part o’ this blurb & could be an entertaining topic for a book if done with self-effacing humor & without the bathos-inducing melodrama that this blurb is so far exhibiting.

The blurb continues:

Because there’s something wrong with Martha. There has been since a little bomb went off in her brain, at seventeen, leaving her changed in a way no doctor or drug could fix then and no one, even now, can explain—why can say she is so often sad, cruel to everyone she loves, why she finds it harder to be alive than other people.

This paragraph just insults the reader’s intelligence, pretending that hardly anyone has e’er heard o’ this concept o’ “depression” before. So far it seems like 1 o’ the 47 words o’ the previous review was right: “egomania”. This blurb tries to pass off our protagonist as the world’s only sufferer from depression, e’en tho that is far from the truth. Usually books ’bout depression are written for others with depression in a way o’ creating resonance & understanding, making them not feel ’lone; but this blurb’s use o’ alien diction to depict depression as this 1-o’-a-kind mutation o’ the protagonist does the opposite: as someone who does have depression, it turns me off, & it feels mo’ like an exotic exhibitionist performance put on to thrill people who don’t have depression — which is a gross, dehumanizing thing to do. I can’t tell, since the previous review was so vague, but maybe this was also what Donaghue meant by “condescending”: it certainly feels condescending to people with depression.

With Patrick gone, the only place Martha has left to go is her childhood home, to live with her chaotic parents, to survive without Ingrid, the sister who made their growing-up bearable, who said she would never give up on Martha, and who finally has.

Speaking o’ vague language: ¿what does it mean for Martha’s parents to be “chaotic”? ¿Is that a euphemism for “abusive”? Also, I certainly hope this Ingrid person literally abandoned Martha & didn’t “abandon” her in a metaphorical way by dying, since the protagonist would look like a selfish asshole for complaining ’bout how she suffered for someone else’s death.

It feels like the end but maybe, by going back, Martha will get to start again. Maybe there is a different story to be written, if Martha can work out where to begin.

“It feels like the end but maybe”’s missing comma is a legit grammatical error in an official blurb for a mass-published book.

I’m sure many o’ the hot-shot commercial publisher types I’ve read from would say that this is a well-written blurb, but I disagree. Then ’gain, I think their perspective is that the obnoxiously intelligence-insulting way this blurb is written is “attention-grabbing” to the masses o’ idiots in the same way jingling keys would be, whereas as someone who doesn’t find jingling keys particularly fascinating, I find it, well, obnoxiously intelligence-insulting, so this is probably why I wouldn’t make a good publisher, since my instinct is to criticize the masses for being idiots, which isn’t liable to make the masses o’ idiots want to buy my stuff, whereas the effective way to fleece them is to pat them on the back for their idiocy & indulge them.

But we haven’t gotten to the bottom o’ the swamp yet: that would be the editorial reviews.

“Sorrow and Bliss is a brilliantly faceted and extremely funny book about depression that engulfed me in the way I’m always hoping to be engulfed by novels. While I was reading it, I was making a list of all the people I wanted to send it to, until I realized that I wanted to send it to everyone I know.” — Ann Patchett

Drinking game: take a drink e’ery time we see “brilliant” or [insert adverb] funny. Enjoy that coma from alcohol poisoning.

But this review doesn’t just spew clichés, but also mangles them: ¿what does “brilliantly faceted” mean? Nobody uses that phrase. The phrase is “multifaceted”, not just “faceted”. “Faceted” by itself doesn’t mean anything in this context, & it isn’t made any mo’ meaningful by the addendum o’ an empty superlative before it.

We also have laughably exaggerated metaphors, making it sound like the reviewer has an online fetish for being “engulfed” by literature.

The most shocking thing is that this blurb was written by a real writer & the daughter o’ 1 o’ the most imaginative writers who had a very distinct voice to his writing. I guess you can’t inherit literary genius. My only hope is that Ann crapped this out in a minute for whate’er quick buck they were offering.

Tier: E

“Completely brilliant, I loved it. I think every girl and woman should read it.” — Gillian Anderson

This reviewer judges this book to be “completely brilliant”, as opposed to those which are merely partially brilliant. Then we get a comma splice, & after that redundant padding: Gillian doesn’t just think e’ery woman should read it, but also e’ery girl. ¿Why stop there? Maybe e’ery female, lady, gal, lass, miss, madame, femme, & any other synonym you could find should read it, too.

Tier: F

“An incredibly funny and devastating debut. . . . enlivened, often, by a madcap energy. Yet it still manages to be sensitive and heartfelt, and to offer a nuanced portrayal of what it means to try to make amends and change, even when that involves ‘start[ing] again from nothing.’” — The Guardian

It says something bad when a newspaper as shoddy as The Guardian provides 1 o’ the least inane review o’ the pack. There’s still plenty o’ trite, empty phrases ( “madcap energy” ) & empty, repetitive superlatives ( “sensitive & heartfelt” ), & the reviewer fails to describe this book in a way that distinguishes it from millions of other books, that could also be described as “funny & devastating”, or the many books that vaguely involve “try[ing] to make amends & change, even when that involves ‘start[ing] again from nothing’.

Tier: D

“Exploring the multifaceted hardships of mental illness and the frustrating inaccuracy of diagnoses, medications, and treatments, Sorrow and Bliss is darkly comic and deeply heartfelt . . . Martha’s voice is acerbic, witty, and raw.” — Booklist (starred review)

This is the closest a review came to having anything resembling a specific example from the book to make it stand out from any other book, the conflict o’ struggling with “inaccurate” diagnoses & medications — tho this does make me rethink my earlier interpretation o’ our 1st reviewer’s criticism o’ “anti-science” & makes me wonder if, quite the opposite, he was criticizing this book for exhibiting depression-skepticism or skepticism toward the efficacy o’ antidepressants ( I don’t feel bad for the misinterpretation, since, as I said, he refused to give a concrete example to back up their vague criticism o’ “anti-science” ).

Tier: C

“Meg Mason’s unflagging comic impulses drive this novel about the havoc a woman’s mental illness wreaks on her marriage.” — Shelf Awareness (starred review)

A common vice o’ reviews, specially editorial reviews, which are far too short to give useful information, is trading meaningful critique based on examples o’ the text with empty but poetic ( & that poetry is mo’ William McGonagall than Kobayashi Issa ) diction. If this reviewer wrote “This book ’bout a woman’s depression ruining their marriage is funny” ’twould say ’bout the same thing, but they try to hide such an empty conclusion with laughably o’erwrought purple prose as if they were describing Conan the Barbarian wrestling the ermine-orbed serpent or Moses parting the red sea with his rod aloft: this book isn’t just funny; its writer’s “unflagging comic impulses drive this novel” like a school bus.

Tier: D

“Brutal, tender, funny, this novel—a portrait of love in all of its many incarnations—came alive for me from the very first page. I saw myself here. I saw the people I love. I am changed by this book.” — Mary Beth Keane, New York Times bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes

’Nother common design pattern for automated review generation: “[adjective], [adjective], [adjective]…]. & if that wasn’t ’nough, we end 1 o’ the tritest, most ridiculous exaggerated praise e’er: claiming that the work “changed” the reviewer. Unfortunately, these works ne’er change these reviewers into people with any form o’ imagination or critical skills o’ analysis.

By the way, my favorite example o’ this silly trope is a YouTube video that claims in its thumbnail, I shit you not, that the music in Donkey Kong Country:

I mean, I love Donkey Kong Country’s music, too, but I can’t remember any philosophical epiphanies or major life decisions I’ve come to that were inspired by the bubbling melodies o’ “Hot Head Bop”.

Tier: E

“A truly comic novel about love and the despair of depression. It’s a rare and beautiful thing when an author can break your heart with humor; it’s also the quality I admire most in a writer.”  — Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, New York Times bestselling author of The Nest and Good Company

This novel is truly comic, as opposed to those fake comedic posers. This review is notable in that it makes a point specific ’nough to be outright wrong: tragicomedy is, in fact, not rare @ all, but goes all the way back to e’en The Bible, & probably earlier ancient literature, too.

Tier: D

“A quiet and achingly beautiful love story. . . . LOVED it. Masterfully written. And powerful.” — Elin Hilderbrand

More o’erwrought prose. I hate it when a book is so beautiful it gives me aches. To wrap up our bathos, we have the high superlative “masterfully written” followed by the much weaker “also, ’twas powerful, too”. “This book is genius & also pretty darn swell”.

Tier: F

“Sorrow and Bliss is hilarious, haunting, and utterly captivating. Meg Mason has created a heroine as prickly as Bernadette in Where’d You Go, Bernadette. Her humor is as arch and wise as the best work of Joan Didion and Rachel Cusk, yet completely original. What a thrilling new voice!” — Amanda Eyre Ward, New York Times bestselling author of The Jetsetters

The other cliché to add to our bingo card is comparing a work to ’nother work — tho I love how this reviewer twists 1 o’ her comparisons by addending, “yet completely original”. Yes, this completely original work that can only be described by saying it’s like other works. I’m also not sure what “arch” humor is & have a sneaking suspicion that this reviewer doesn’t know, either.

Tier: E

“Funny and tragic.” — Jojo Moyes

Give Jojo credit: this says what all the other reviews say in just 3 words.

Tier: D

“I really loved Meg Mason’s SORROW AND BLISS, which is sometimes very sad and often very funny and ultimately hopeful.” — Linda Holmes, New York Times bestselling author of Evvie Drake Starts Over, via Twitter

OK, to be fair, this 1 adds “& hopeful”, too.

Tier: E

“So dark, so funny, so true. You will see your sad, struggling, triumphant self in this deeply affecting novel. What a debut.” — Laura Zigman, author of Separation Anxiety

Calling a book “deeply affecting” is like describing my chair as “strongly sittable”: it may be true, but doesn’t mean much.

Tier: F

“A gorgeous, heart-rending book.” — Flynn Berry, New York Times bestselling author of Northern Spy

¡YOU ARE TEARING ME APART, SORROW AND BLISS!

Tier: F

“SORROW AND BLISS is brilliant. A comic gem that will also break your heart.” — Julia Claiborne Johnson, author of Be Frank With Me and Better Luck Next Time

I’m surprised it took this long to encounter a review describing the work as a gem or some kind o’ jewelry.

Tier: F

“Evocative and hopeful.” — Book Riot, “5 Contemporary Literary Fiction Books That Are Game-Changers”

Generic & meaningless. That’s a great way to describe a book that is purportedly a “game-changer”. Nobody’s e’er written a book that’s evocative or hopeful till Meg Mason invented the concepts o’ evocation & hope in 2021.

Tier: F

“Sorrow and Bliss is a thing of beauty. Astute observations on marriage, motherhood, family, and mental illness are threaded through a story that is by turns devastating and restorative. Every sentence rings true. I will be telling everyone I love to read this book.” — Sara Collins, Costa First Novel Award-winning author of The Confessions of Frannie Langton

¿Why do you abuse the people you love?

Tier: E

“Sharp yet humane, and jaw-droppingly funny, this is the kind of novel you will want to press into the hands of everyone you know. Mason has an extraordinary talent for dialogue and character, and her understanding of how much poignancy a reader can take is profound. A masterclass on family, damage and the bonds of love: as soon as I finished it, I started again.” — Jessie Burton, New York Times bestselling author of The Miniaturist

“Spicy, yet sour, & nose-pickingly readable, this is the kind o’ review you will want to shove into the mouth o’ e’eryone you know. Jessie has a spectacular skill for adverbs & using commas, & her understanding o’ how much zestiness a reader can take is insightful. A Raid: Shadow Legends on drama, diction, & the love triangle o’ adjectives: as soon as I ate it, I ate it ’gain.” — J. J. W. Mezun, The Mezunian bestrepelling author o’ A Year o’ Yuppie Inanity with Mozilla’s Pocket ( An Unpublished Classic ).

Tier: D

“Patrick Melrose meets Fleabag. Brilliant.” — Clare Chambers, author of Small Pleasures

¡Irrelevancy, your honor!

Tier: F

“Examines with pitiless clarity the impact of the narrator’s mental illness on her closest relationships. . . . Mason brings the reader into a deep understanding of Martha’s experience without either condescending to her or letting her off too easily. . . . An astute depiction of life on the psychic edge.” — Kirkus Reviews

They’re not surprising, but these god damn adjectives still get me. You can’t just have regular ol’ clarity: it has to be the “pitiless” kind, like it’s a stronger palette swap in the latter half o’ Dragon Quest. Since we’ve established that the blurb a’least thinks Martha is the only person in the universe with this exotic mutation as-yet unnamed & undiscovered by all the brightest scientists, I’m doubtful o’ the “without either condescending” part. & since Martha apparently complains ’bout how agonizing it is to live in a gated community that they just can’t bear to leave, ’less Martha is given the guillotine by the proletariat by the end o’ the book, I think the author probably does let her off too easily.

Tier: D

“The book is a triumph. A brutal, hilarious, compassionate triumph.” — Alison Bell, cocreator and star of The Letdown

¿Was this review written by Lionel Fanthorpe? “This review is repetitive. A repetitive repetition that repeats & repeats & says the same thing they say ’gain & ’gain & doesn’t say anything else but that which has been said before & nothing mo’ but what was said before”.

Tier: F

“This is a romance, true, but a real one. It’s modern love up against the confusing, sad aches of mental illness, with all its highs, lows, humour and misery. Comparisons to Sally Rooney will be made, but Mason’s writing is less self-conscious than Rooney’s, and perhaps more mature. Her character work is outstanding, and poignant—the hairline fractures, contradictions and nuances of the middle-class family dynamic are painstakingly rendered with moving familiarity and black humour, resulting in a combination as devastating and sharply witty as Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag.” — Bookseller+Publisher

I’m glad that the reviewer alerted me that this book is a “real” romance, as opposed to all those fake romances that are truly ’bout martian conquerors. I always hate it when I buy a book with some sexy shirtless man on the cover & it’s just blasting cyberpneumatic cannons @ the Xythnians from Kyklocks. ¿How will my cyberpneumatic cannon shoot off then?

& they let you know that this is a modern love, involving mental illness, which didn’t exist before 2021. ¿Virginia Woolf? ¡Ne’er heard o’ her!

Despite all this, this is 1 o’ the mo’ in-depth — a’least as in-depth as any o’ these Hallmark card reviews get — reviews. Note how it makes a comparison to ’nother writer, but qualifies it by noting specific differences ( which is mo’ meaningful than just saying “but also completely original”, which is just straight-up contradictory ). Granted, it’d be better if the claims o’ being “less self-conscious” & “more mature” were qualified with examples & elaboration, since we’re still taking the reviewer on their word & they’re still relying heavily on vague superlatives. & the rest also devolves into a list o’ superlatives, with the hint that it this book s’posedly goes into greater depth into the complications o’ middle-class families than some unnamed general standard being the closest to what we might call actually giving meaningful information. Still, based on our now subterranean standards this is up on the higher tiers.

Tier: B

“Improbably charming . . . will have you chortling and reading lines aloud.” — People

( Laughs ). E’en the reviewers are vague: we don’t e’en get a specific person cited for this review, but some vague “people”. This gives a new perspective to the phrase “¡The people have spoken!”.

I like how “People” starts by laying out their expectations that this book would be shitty, setting up the gravel-level standards this book apparently surpassed. Presumably, these low standards were based on reading the blurb.

This review carries out the impressive feat o’ being both vague & clearly wrong: it libels me by claiming that I will “chortle” — ’cause our failed poet reviewer can’t use a basic word like “laugh” — & read lines ’loud, which I would ne’er do for e’en the funniest book, simply ’cause reading lines ’loud while laughing noisily in public is something only a peak douche bag would do, & reading lines ’loud & laughing to yourself while ’lone is something e’en a deranged lunatic like me would consider too bedlamite.

Tier: F

Below these reviews my eye caught the author bio, &, well…

Meg Mason is a journalist whose career began at the Financial Times and the Times of London. Her work has since appeared in Vogue, Elle, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Sunday Times (UK), and the New Yorker’s Daily Shouts. Born in New Zealand, she now lives in Sydney, Australia, with her husband and two daughters. [emphasis mine]

So we can confirm that Sorrow & Bliss: A Work o’ Literature Comprising Abstract Latin Letters that Combine to Form Abstract Concepts Physically Bound in the Form o’ a Codex is an author self-insert book so transparent that the author couldn’t e’en be arsed to change the name o’ the magazine they worked for to 1 o’ its carbon-copy competitors.

Bonus: Mo’ Bad Reviews

Our 1st reviewer, Steve Donaghue, also wrote a list o’ worst 2021 nonfiction books, & it starts pretty funny:

10 The Chief’s Chief by Mark Meadows (All Seasons Press) – On January 6, 2021, President Donald Trump incited a violent insurrection to attack the US Capitol, overthrow the US government, and install himself as an unelected dictator. Mark Meadows publicly endorsed this attempted coup. Shame on All Seasons Press for giving him a book contract.

Kind o’ low-hanging fruit for a worst-book choice, — specially since the rightwing grift machine pumps out these doorstops e’ery year — but I can’t disagree, & it’s only #10. ¿What’s next?

Tier: B

9 The Tyranny of Big Tech by Josh Hawley (Regnery Publishing) On January 6, 2021, President Donald Trump incited a violent insurrection to attack the US Capitol, overthrow the US government, and install himself as an unelected dictator. Josh Hawley publicly endorsed this attempted coup. Shame on Regnery Publishing for giving him a book contract.

I mean, I can’t disagree…

Tier: B

Unfortunately, Donaghue gives ’way the game when he makes a mistake copy-pasting the review for the Peter Navarro book & using for the Jim Jordan book, as he blames Peter Navarro ’gain. Or maybe he just really hates Peter Navarro & decides he wants to blame him a 2nd time just to be sure.

Some o’ the other items are weirder, tho…

6 The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America’s Institutions Against Dissent by Ben Shapiro (Broadside Books) – Very smart and very lazy Ben Shapiro takes a legitimate social issue – the rise of the authoritarian Left – and lavishes pan-shallow unoriginal platitudes on them while cloaking the whole mess in the fascists talking points of the very monsters who consider him a useful idiot.

1 o’ the great thing ’bout using these vague superlatives or invectives is that I have to play guessing games regarding what the person is trying to e’en say. Now, from Ben Shapiro that’s no surprise, since like most fascists he deliberately communicates in shibboleths to disguise bigotry as profound, complex thought. But Donaghue, who portrays himself as vaguely antifascist & spent half his reviews criticizing what many fascists considered to be a feather in their cap, seems to have different goals. One may expect him to be o’ the Enlightened Centrist™ tribe who feels the need to balance out their outrage @ a Republican attempt to outright o’erthrow the US government by manufacturing an imaginary leftist equivalent. Perhaps he portrays the “Black Lives Matter” riots as the equivalent, despite the fact that these riots presented no threat to the US government beyond being an international embarrassment — & if that’s the case, then we’d have to consider nearly e’ery American who vacations to other countries as an equal evil to the Trump Putsch. ¿But, anyway, would e’en an Enlightened Centrist™ consider Shapiro to be “very smart and very lazy”? I’m hoping Donaghue takes his brilliant “rap isn’t music ’cause my daddy told me it isn’t” & the way he embarrassed himself in front o’ a BBC conservative by being too crazy e’en for him — which adds him to the list o’ Americans who are an international embarrassment — as examples o’ him just being too lazy to unleash that intelligence that he’s keeping very well hidden.

It’s not that I’m in denial that there exists an authoritarian left; but when I think o’ “authoritarian left”, I think o’ Leninists, & I don’t see any big Leninist movement on the verge o’ seizing the US capitol & setting up the American Neobolshevik Communist Party as the dictatorship o’ the proletariat, no matter how many jokes ’bout guillotines I make. As we’ve established here before, we can’t e’en get Biden to do something as symbolic as raising his fist & shouting, “¡Down with the bourgeoisie!”, while still doing their bidding, no matter how funny ’twould be. Maybe Donaghue took some downers & fell asleep while watching a Russian Civil War documentary just after US news & mixed them up in his mind. It happens to me sometimes, too. But given some o’ the other things he’s written, I get the sneaking suspicion his idea o’ “authoritarian left” is just some irrelevant few randos on Twitter calling him a racist ’cause he refused to capitalize the B in “black people” — which is to say that he is “too-online” & needs to stop spending so much time on Twitter & mistaking the idiots on it as relevant to greater society.

Complaining ’bout the “rise” o’ the authoritarian left also really undermines Donaghue’s attacks gainst Trump as a fascist — a clear rightwing authoritarian. ¿Is it reasonable for him to be alarmed that the left should become authoritarian as a counterbalance to the right’s growing authoritarianism, or is Donaghue 1 o’ the many delusional Americans who thinks reality spawns from dreams & wishes & not power & that sternly protesting people willing to use violence & underhanded tactics will magically make these tyrant-wannabes no longer a threat? After all, when fascism rose as a threat in Europe, the allied powers acted in many ways that almost anyone would consider “authoritarian” — far worse than a few randos calling other randos racist for not spelling “latinos” “l@t!n%”, like any progressive L33tspeaker should. ¿Would not Donaghue consider FDR, who interned Japanese Americans & heavily censored newspapers, radio, & e’en letters, an example o’ the “authoritarian left”? ¿Would he say the same ’bout Winston Churchill, who also censored media while the UK was fighting fascists? Also, ¿didn’t Donaghue outright call for publishers to refuse to publish works by Trump supporters? ¿Isn’t that censorship, & thus “authoritarianism” — a far greater form o’ authoritarianism than calling other people bad names, which, in fact, is not authoritarianism, but merely using one’s freedom-o’-speech rights to express their opinion of others? It seems reasonable that in an America where violence gainst minorities is on the rise that jokes ’bout black people go from being harmless edgy comedy to a means to recruiting mo’ fascists, & that it’s a reasonable reaction by the left to feel added urgency to employ whate’er means don’t full-on violate freedom o’ speech, or e’en defacto suppression o’ speech thru economic means, to try & stifle & undermine this tactic, which, ultimately, is for the goal o’ subverting e’en the pseudodemocracy that the US has. But I guess it’s mo’ important that Donaghue ne’er has to fear being called a racist, which is literally lethal to white people, than it is for white people to endure the slightest inconvenience to prevent fascism from coming to power. Expressing one’s disdain for fascism is all one needs to do to make it topple @ its foundation in the fantasyland o’ people who live purely in the world o’ books & not political reality.

But it gets worse…

5 Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm by Robin DiAngelo (Beacon Press) – I wouldn’t have thought it possible that the author of White Fragility could write a book more virulently racist in just one lifetime, but this noxious volume – in which she makes clear that all white people are racist genetically, regardless of upbringing, education, or outlook (Klan members will find such claims familiar-sounding, only in a slightly different context) – does the trick.

This review devolves into outright malicious lying, & one can easily see this simply by reviewing the Amazon blurb:

In White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo explained how racism is a system into which all white people are socialized and challenged the belief that racism is a simple matter of good people versus bad. [emphasis mine]

Dr. DiAngelo — who is a white person, & so can shit-talk crackers just as much as I can, just like black people can use the N-word — nowhere blames genetics for racism, but white people’s social conditioning. This makes sense when you consider that Dr. DiAngelo is a sociologist, not a biologist. Mo’ importantly, she distinguishes it from the bitter hatred o’, say, a Klansman, as a different kind o’ racism caused by an unintentional harm caused by ignorance. It is Donaghue who decides to be triggered by being called a well-meaning accidental racist, as if this “offense” is anywhere close to the kind o’ spiteful, actually threatening speech that hardcore racist white people spew ( ¿does DiAngelo recommend harassing white people with depression & urging them to kill themselves in her book, which is what white supremacist groups like Stormfront actually did to people after Trump won the election? ), & rather than do what a smart person with any dignity would do & just shrug it off & say, “¿What are you gonna do?”, he stupidly gives in to the bait & reacts in the most extreme, idiotic way possible, literally reacting to the accusation o’ being racist with the schoolyard comeback, “¡No, you are! ¡In fact, you’re such a superultramega racist that you’re just like those Klansmen who murdered & intimidated black people for decades… ’cept, you know, you haven’t actually murdered anyone or intimated anyone or have done anything but make a few white people feel a li’l queasy”. It shows an amazing lack o’ self-awareness that a white person would unironically attack without e’en the slightest sense o’ humor a book called “White Fragility”. “¡Can you believe these bullies called me a whiny bitch!”, he whinily bitched. I would venture to argue that the idiocy that Donaghue portrays here is mo’ racist gainst white people like me since it does far mo’ damage to our reputation than some guilt-fetishing honkey, whose worst crime is actually probably annoying black people with her constant Jesus-like faux-humility, as if constant apologies & longwinded treatises on made-up jargon acronyms like BIPOC help black people with real problems, like being shot by white supremacist police or poverty — albeit, none o’ which are on the same level o’ enormity as people on Twitter calling Donaghue mean words.

Donaghue could’ve gotten sympathy by merely calling this book dumb & useless; but portraying it as an extreme form o’ racism comparable to Klan lynchings is a ridiculous form o’ both-sidesism that helps the very fascists he pretends to be fighting gainst. Trying to conflate minor misdemeanors gainst white people as equal to the worst acts o’ racist terror gainst black people is the precise tactic that fascists use to justify white supremacist terror as “defense” gainst “the authoritarian left”.

Anyway, this review o’ reviews has gone on way too long. Get the fuck out o’ my house so I can take my pants off.

So it’s settled: Democrats keep the senate ( thank you Masto for saving me from waiting till December to confirm this point ) & Republicans take the house. I’m not sure why people are making a big deal ’bout this: I remember for most o’ summer people were predicting this same outcome, save maybe that Republicans would’ve had a much mo’ formidable win till a bunch o’ troll Republican polls came round & 538 for no logical reason @ all let their trolling pollute their polls. Or maybe that’s not what happened. ¿Who cares? Polls are a waste o’ time.

Moreo’er, I’m not sure why Democrats are hopped up on so much copium ’bout the official fascist party doing less well than expected. Many have compared these midterms to the 2002 midterms wherein Republicans beat historical precedence & kept the house & regained the senate despite having a newly-elected president 2 years earlier, the only time such a thing happened other than in 1934 with FDR, which many credit to 9/11 “bringing the country together”. “Ne’er forget” Americans seemed to have forgotten so soon that we had a 20’s version in 2021 with 1/6, ’cept the difference is that whereas Democrats had nothing to do with 9/11, Republicans had much to do with 1/6. If anything, one should expect that Democrats should have succeeded better this year than Republicans did in 2002, but I guess inflation is mo’ important than protecting e’en the flimsy ’scuse for democracy the US has. To paraphrase Ben Franklin: Americans who are willing to trade democracy for the sake o’ cheaper prices deserve & will get neither.

1 thing e’eryone acknowledges: a house as split as they are will be hopeless @ keeping the government functioning, — & if the Republicans are able to agree to pass bills, they definitely won’t pass any bills that help people, as their outright expressed philosophy to governing, as designed by Newt Gingrich, is to make sure things don’t go well under a Democratic president to ensure he doesn’t look good, which, coupled with the aforementioned historical fact that the opposite party o’ the president always takes the legislature, means that the US legislature spends half its time deliberately trying to fail — which means things, specially the economy, will continue to plunge for the vast majority o’ Americans, leading to further apathy toward democracy — since what the US calls “democracy” is clearly dysfunctional — & thus further tolerance o’ fascism. Democrats cheering o’er their only minor failure gainst a party that committed treason gainst their own country don’t see any reason to feel concern o’er this ugly situation. Proof that moderate liberals still lack any understanding o’ politics, I see many huff & puff on high-voltage copium that the Republicans taking the house will actually be good for Democrats, since they’ll spend 2 years being failures ( letting people become mo’ miserable, which I guess is just cracked eggs for our long-term omelette ), & thus the people in all their enlightenment will realize what failures the Republicans are & vote gainst them. ’Course, this is based on the delusion that the average American is as politically nerdy as them & e’en knows what the house is. As established, Republican policy is to deliberately do badly under a Democrat president ’cause they know that the president will be blamed, just as Biden has been blamed for the uncooperative senate being unable to pass much in the past 2 years. The assertion that a blue wave is coming in 2024 is pure wishful thinking, specially since e’en liberals admit that Democrats will struggle to keep the senate in 2024; so e’en if Democrats do win back the house, but lose the senate, it’s the same problem, ’cept then if a supreme court justice dies Republicans will refuse to give Biden his judges.

& speaking o’ the supreme court, they, the most powerful instrument o’ government, who can single-handedly shut down any government policy they like with no appeal & can, thru creative use o’ this, effectively create their own laws, also with no appeal, will be ruled by Republicans for decades thanks to their strong majority & lifetime reigns, & are currently working on further dismantling the “Voter’s Rights Act” & will soon rule on whether or not Republican legislatures can o’erride their voters in terms o’ electoral votes. These unsavory facts also don’t come up during liberals’ current party. For instance, we have this laughable article by “political theorists” ( hacks ), who claim, “The 2022 midterm election was expected to be a referendum on Joe Biden. It’s closer to say it was a referendum on the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court lost”. ’Cept anyone with the slightest understanding o’ American politics realize that the supreme court can’t lose elections they’re not under — they can do whate’er they want with no repercussions, which is why they can do things like refuse to recuse themselves in cases involving their family members & judge in clearly biased ways to help said family members.

I should add that while moderate liberals like to emphasize the effect the Dobbs judgment had on the midterms, they don’t acknowledge that the Democrats’ weak loss means that there is no chance that Democrats will be able to pass a bill legalizing abortion — which means that the end result is still a loss for liberals.

So, yes, if one is delusional & believes that nothing has changed, Democrats’ weak loss should seem astounding & a good sign for the future, given that nothing changes. But those paying attention & knowing ’bout the mechanisms Republicans are setting in place should be able to see that howe’er li’l Democrats lost the current battle, they already lost the longterm war. & while Democrats may not have lost by that much, democracy has definitely lost.

The only truly positive sign is that Republicans, in their utter lack o’ consistency other than their desire for winning & having power, have taken a sudden turn gainst Trump & are starting to favor DeSantis, which could lead to a civil war that could hurt Republicans’ chances o’ winning presidency, a’least, in 2024 ( granted I’m doubtful o’ either being able to beat Biden in 2024 — Trump already lost in 2020, after all ). This is too bad, since Trump made a good point that he was the 1st president in a “long period” to go “decades, decades” without war in his 4 years o’ president. Any president who magically turns 4 years into “decades, decades” has to be impressive.

But I’m not so sure: as established, Republicans only care ’bout winning, not ideological purity, &, having such a lack o’ independent thought ( as evidenced by all the Washington State Republicans being clones o’ each other & the fact that Republicans just spew the same unfunny dadjoke memes where’er they are ), so they’ll probably just vote for whoe’er the Republican candidate is, regardless o’ who it is, e’en if not Trump.

¡Ne’ertheless! Regardless o’ the actual consequences o’ this election, Republicans are anusaching ’bout it, & thus it is our satirical duty to dunk on them. That’s right, this year we’re not going to waste our time looking in @ Daily Kos… ¿who else did I look in @? ¿The Nation? ¿r/politics? Democracy Now’s ’bove vulgar racehorse shenanigans & Counterpunch should just have ’nother copypaste article ’bout how e’ery election is just a victory for capitalism. Anyway, we’re not interested in seeing these freaks jerk themselves off o’er this minor win. We want to see some moaning & groaning. Thus, I must dig deep into the sewers that is rightwing media.

’Course we can’t go an election without a li’l conspiracy theorying:

THEY DID IT AGAIN! Two massive unexplained ballot drops gave Gretchen Whitmer the lead in Michigan – They ran a ‘Drop and Roll’ in Michigan pic.twitter.com/VIxjQVYgdh

— ✨️?Emmy?✨️ (@brixwe) November 10, 2022

¡Gasp! ¡Look @ those tall lines! ¿What does it mean? ’Course, anyone halfway literate in graphs — which, tragically, doesn’t include Republicans — will clearly see that Whitmer had the lead long before those circled parts & that the jumps applied to both candidates, so they’re nugatory, anyway.

Anyway, this person, who claims to be “[j]ust an average Joe who loves God, America, Airplanes and Racing”, but apparently doesn’t love reality, had this special scientific insight:

Straight lines are ALWAYS man made. They do not occur in nature, and they NEVER occur normally in reliable data results. If you do see a straight line its a red flag and a sign of human intervention.

— SuperDaveMc (@SuperDaveMc) November 10, 2022

Straight lines are just like dinosaur bones: Satan put them there to tempt us.

Meanwhile, living bowtie, Tucker Carlson, babbles incoherently ’bout the votes taking too dang long to be counted:

Officials in Arizona told CNBC today that they are “prepared to work through Thanksgiving and possibly Christmas as well.” That means results by New Year’s in a race that was held in early November. That seems late. How late is it? Well, by comparison, the results of the 1862 midterm elections, which were tabulated by candlelight without machines or even electricity in the middle of a raging civil war, were clear before the end of the week. That was the entire country. Arizona is a single state, which, by the way, is a fraction of the size of Florida, which, as you may have noticed, counted its votes in less than a day—so did Brazil, an entire country.

1st, considering states are counting votes simultaneously, there’s no difference ’tween the entire country counting votes vs. 1 state; 2nd, votes are still being counted by hand; 3rd, the US has mo’ than 10 times as many people as then; 4th, elections were corrupt & run by boss machines back then, so it’s laughable to use the notorious 1800s as an example o’ good elections. ¿Would he rather have elections like the 1876 election, where it was decided by backdoor agreements?

That seems embarrassing, if not like a full-blown emergency. Counting the votes isn’t some added extra you get from government if they have a surplus, like fighting climate change or bringing equity. Counting the votes is a core function of government, along with law enforcement, maintaining the roads and keeping the border secure.

Since the new government doesn’t form till January, I’m not sure why taking an extra week is a problem, nor how it indicates any suspicious activity. If anything, it indicates higher standards. Handling voting for an entire country o’ 300 million in just 1 day is the stupidest idea in the world & is bound to lead to errors. If Democrats wanted to steal the election, ¿why would they bother prolonging things? ¿What good does that do? Like, we already have well-established examples o’ ballot stuffing in the country from the aforementioned 1800s boss machines & the mid 1900s, & they didn’t involve election delays ’cause the perpetrators were smart ’nough to realize that you can stuff ballots in just 1 day & that looking suspicious for no extra benefits is a dumb idea.

Efficient elections are the reason you pay taxes, but Arizona doesn’t seem to have them.

It most certainly is not why I pay taxes.

Don’t ask, commands CNN. If you’ve got questions about this or any other election, no unauthorized questions. Instead, watch CNN or if you don’t have cable, simply trust your local officials.

I’m not sure who Fox News is eluding to that I should trust. I’m totally sure Fox News are advocating for anarchism, since there’s absolutely no one I can trust, & therefore valid elections are impossible now. It’s not as if we have organizations that o’ersee these elections & that there’s too many people in these organizations to keep a tight lip on the conspiracy. Keep in mind, e’ery terrible thing the US does gets leaked thanks to organizations like WikiLeaks, but this vote steal is as tight as any government scheme e’er produced — well, outside o’ Bush doing 9/11, ’course.

Speaking o’ Bush, ¿is his Proust-loving speechwriter writing Carlson’s script? “If you’ve got questions about this or any other election, no unauthorized questions” is right up there with “you won’t get fooled again”.

They’re doing their jobs. They’re doing it right. Really CNN? Can we get a little more reporting on that? How right are they doing it?

Yes, I expect exact mathematical figures on the objective unit o’ rightness & the precise % o’ rightness. If it’s not ’bove 80%, which electionologists have measured to be the minimum level o’ rightness to reach the natural rate o’ rightness, then it’s not right ’nough & Trump instantly becomes president, as per the constitution.

¿Was CNN really constantly badgering their drooling watchers, “The elections are going fine. We swear no conspiracies are going on”? ¿Do they also host weekly segments informing their brilliant viewers that JFK’s assassination was not, in fact, an inside job? “We’re going to have to rate that Biden is an alien trying to steal your blood with his fluoridated water is a ‘Pants on Fire’ debunked fact”.

It’s pretty funny, but we digress.

I mean, it’s only funny if you’re an idiot & find basic civic mechanisms confusing.

Then there’s the most amusingly stupid explanation of all: bad candidates were the problem. That’s all over Twitter. All the Twitter pundits are telling you now the candidates were subpar and that was the problem. Candidate quality matters. Well, of course, strictly speaking, that is true. The quality of a candidate does matter, but really, how much does it matter? Well, let’s see. Joe Biden got elected president two years ago from his basement. John Fetterman became a U.S. senator last night. Does anyone think John Fetterman was a quality candidate? Is that why he won, because they had quality candidates on the left? Do the voters of Pennsylvania really want a brain damaged candidate who’s never had a real job? Did they think he was more impressive than the guy who spent his career doing heart transplants? Probably not.

I take back what I said ’bout the scriptwriting thing: there’s no way a literate human wrote this babbling. ¿How the hell can someone sound so befuddled while robotically repeating the same memes as e’ery other conservative clone? “¿Do people really not want to support a party who calls stroke victims ‘brain damaged’ just ’cause that party is full o’ repulsive toxic waste in flesh form? That can’t be right — must be ballot-stuffing”.

OK, I can’t stand reading this anymo’. ¿Has Living Bowtie always been this incoherent? It’s amazing that “brain-damaged” Fettuccineman sounded mo’ articulate during his fracking question than Bowtie has thru this whole article. ¿Who the hell can tolerate watching this e’ery day?

’Cause you get mo’ clicks by endlessly repeating yourself, he continued this shtick in a microfiction that seemed like ’twas AI-generated titled, “Democracy is a faith-based system… but who could believe in this?”. Democracy is not faith-based; legitimate democracies involve o’ersight from independent, international organizations like the UN. The fact that an American would say something so stupid shows how Americans know nothing ’bout democracy, which is why they have their idiotic electoral college & senate system & have made their system so that the legislative branch, the most important branch, is the most dysfunctional, while the supreme court, the least democratic branch which is just appointed for life, is the most powerful. ¿Guess which side is adamantly gainst independent o’ersight o’er US elections? So, ’gain, the big question: ¿who are Americans s’posed to trust when it comes to elections? The obvious unstated answer Fox News wants is that Republicans get complete control & can declare elections howe’er they fit like Putin. Those are the only 3 options, since Carlson acknowledges that he doesn’t believe a bipartisan solution is possible: Republicans control the election system, Democrats control the election system, or they’re o’erseen by objective, independent outside sources like e’ery other democracy.

Living bobblehead, Nick Fuentes, friend o’ Republican legislators Paul Gosar & MTG, was much blunter with his solution to the problem:

When you look at these things like abortion, it’s popular. And you can thank the Jewish media for that. Abortion is popular, sodomy is popular, being gay is popular, being a feminist is popular, sex out of wedlock is popular, contraceptives — it’s all popular. That’s not to say it’s good. That’s not to say I like that. Popular means that people support it, which they do. It sucks, and it is what it is, but that’s why we need a dictatorship. That’s unironically why we need to get rid of all that. We need to take control of the media or take control of the government and force the people to believe what we believe or force them to play by our rules and reshape the society.

r/conservative, who spent most o’ the past 6 years stanning for Trump, have now turned round & are blaming him for their loss, since as anyone who has e’er met conservatives know, they hate personal responsibility for their own failures & will literally rewrite history in their head & pretend they always hated Eurasia & loved Eastasia.

On the other hand, you have this discussion revolving round the fact that gen Z went all in for the Democrats, which, save for 1 or 2 people calling for some vague new Reagan to “inspire” people, whate’er that means, generally leads to the most sane conclusion: Republicans should just stop being Republicans.

Modern Voltaire, hoardpepes, who hoarded all the pepes, so you know he’s wise, has this rebuttal:

I agree with hoardpepes: I have no reason to care ’bout founding American values or rights like slavery & the right o’ the supreme court to nullify anything any o’ the other branches do by mere whim & have no reason not to prefer free shit. Maybe if Republicans started offering free shit ’stead o’ garbage like shit that people in the 1700s — who had no taste — like people would like them for once.

But while many are blaming Trump, The Federalist has someone else to blame: ¡time to ditch Mitch McConnell!. The entire basis o’ the criticism is that McConnel didn’t follow Newt’s patented “let shit burn” policy & didn’t refuse to raise the debt limit, which The Federalist themselves acknowledge probably would’ve just led Manchin & Sinema to agree to a Filibuster change to prevent a shutdown & didn’t stick to his principles ( as if McConnell e’er had principles ) & didn’t stick to his threat to sabotage the chip bill, which nobody took seriously, since the businesses that pay Republicans like McConnel benefited from the bill. If anything, Republicans who like to complain ’bout China taking our jerbs & the precariousness o’ Taiwan should be embarrassed they hadn’t passed the chips bill themselves under Trump. As it turns out, McConnell is only gangster when he has a senate majority ’hind him. ¿Who’d have thought?

But who really deserves the most blame are the mean ol’ media & how unfair it is to say mean things ’bout conservatives, their best friends, so says The Federalist in an amazingly incoherent piece:

A Democrat Party that props up an elderly man with obvious signs of mental decay to run as the party’s presidential candidate cares only about power. And voters casting their ballots for the same man, or the even more cognitively challenged Democrat candidate who just won the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate seat, see only one thing: the “D” next to the candidate’s name.

I love how e’en in the article trying to whine ’bout how e’eryone else slanders them as being shitheads the writer couldn’t avoid being a shithead & mocking someone for having a stroke. The secret to why people voted for a man who had a stroke that left them with temporary mental weakness rather than a TV-show host who is just naturally stupid is that they have this thing called “empathy”, a foreign concept to Republicans who would rather whine ’bout their, & only their, problems, as if they matter. If you have to whine ’bout how nobody likes you, that just gives people mo’ reason to dislike you.

The establishment press likewise plays for team Democrat, and conservatives won’t change that even if they nominate the most milquetoast moderate candidate willing to don a scarlet R.

Theoretically, since Republicans haven’t done that.

Enter stage right, 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Proof o’ the point: they had to spend multiple paragraphs going all the way back a full decade to find a Republican who is halfway believable as a “moderate” Republican. That’s Romney, the same man who made fun o’ his fans for wearing cheap raincoats & slandered 47% o’ the population as entitled, while flip-flopping on most issues. So, yes, he was moderate to the point o’ standing for nothing & was an asshole to e’eryone else. Shocking that nobody liked him.

The 2012 presidential contest also showed that the Democrat Party, its loyal members, politicians on the left side of the aisle, and the press don’t really care about a candidate’s demeanor either. Then-vice presidential candidate Joe Biden’s clownish behavior during his debate with his Republican counterpart, Paul Ryan, went ignored in the main, and the media continue to overlook Biden’s bullying behavior.

¿Why are we still talking ’bout 2012? I’m sorry Jr. Paul “I Don’t E’en Realize Rage Against the Machine Are Leftists” Ryan got fucking slayed by Biden harder than Eminem slayed MGK, but if you can’t handle a debate, stay out o’ the rap battle. That’s not bullying, that’s doing your job.

[Ignore paragraph o’ Big Hunter’s Emails]

Younger conservatives who didn’t live through the Reagan presidency can be excused for thinking Democrats are open to the right kind of Republican. But for those old enough to remember the ’80s, “come on, man.”

As the r/conservative forum & the recent voting results showed, younger conservatives are a mo’ endangered species than mountain gorillas.

The left trashed Ronald Reagan until Democrats needed to destroy George W. Bush, at which time the Gipper became the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being ever to serve as a Republican.

( Laughs ). This kind o’ pathetic hero-worship is sad. ¿Could you imagine a leftist calling Obama “the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being ever”? ¿Which side is antigovernment ’gain?

Yeah, Reagan was so kind & warm when he hired an administration that made gay jokes ’bout AIDS victims, & had been in so many scandals that there’s a Wikipedia article dedicated to it, including bank bailouts long before Bush made them famous & the infamous Iran-Contra scandal, wherein his administration illegally funneled weapons to fascists in Nicaragua, leading him to have the name “Teflon Ron”, since no matter how many illegal things he did, conservative media still refused to criticize him, since they have no standards, evidenced by their choice for “warmest” president.

And now Bush has been remade the consummate statesman. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

No, Bush is still reviled e’en by conservatives as a war criminal who tanked the US economy.

So going back to the 1st paragraph:

Donald Trump is neither a kingmaker nor the palace’s HR director charged with hiring the next court jester. He didn’t make the Republican Party, and he didn’t destroy her fortunes.

This is wrong. Thanks to shambles Bush left the Republican party in, Trump was necessary. After all, his only competition were Jeb Bush & Ted Cruz, candidates that nobody liked. Most conservatives predicted Clinton would win long before the conservative primary finished. It was only when Trump made his surprise win that the Republican party bounced back.

’Course, a large part o’ that bounce back is ignoring history, so it’s no surprise that The Federalist is trying to ignore history, since it’s the only way to make the Republican party look good after Trump broke what he resurrected.

Democrats have since refurbished this strategy by preemptively branding any potential Republican opponent the spawn of the current evil-incarnate titleholder. We saw this with Democrat and media attacks on Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, which began while Trump still resided in the White House and long before DeSantis rode the only true red wave to victory on Tuesday.

Yes, they preemptively attacked DeSantis for no reason whatsoe’er, who had no connection to Trump. That’s why Trump endorsed him in 2018, after all. & it’s not like Democrats attack DeSantis for things he does, like that Disney fiasco or Martha’s Vineyard fiasco.

Conservatives need to vacate their state of denial and accept that the Democrat Party and its politicians, voters, and paramours in the press will attack and reject any Republican put forward. And so will faux Republicans; in fact, that is how you can recognize them.

Awesome, then we’re in agreement on something.

They will push false scandals, misrepresent positions, peddle narratives to the disadvantage of Republicans, brand negative news about Democrats as disinformation, demonize the person and his (or her) voters — and they will never like us or vote with, or for, us.

Note that nowhere in this article has The Federalist provided any evidence o’ any “false” scandals. In fact, this entire article lacks any evidence @ all that is not incestuous links to themselves, which lead to mo’ sourceless thinkpieces, nothing e’en coming close to resembling sources. The only exception is a link to The Week, which they argued gainst as “incorrect”, but don’t go into details for why it’s “incorrect”. This writer would get an F @ my high school for their utter incapability o’ backing up their claims. They literally think they can say “nope, this is wrong ’cause I say so” & that it matters. No wonder nobody takes you guys seriously.

So support your candidate of choice, but realize that come 2024, to the polarized Democrats and their media mouthpieces, the Republican presidential nominee will be either Trump or Trump 2.0.

Cool, their solution is to sit round & pout & do nothing.

If they really wanted to make Democrats look bad, all they have to do is write, “Look @ how pathetic we are & Democrats still lose to us half the time. Imagine how pathetic that makes them”.

When I checked out Fox News, it seemed like they were mo’ interested in such hardhitting stories as “Miami OnlyFans model covered in bruises after stabbing beau to death: photos” & “Texas fire dog unlocks door after officials get locked out”, tho they did have some nice yellowbaiting with “TikTok is ‘China’s digital fentanyl’”. The real news here is that the FCC are such boomers that they don’t realize people can get round federal bans by using VPNs & Tor. If they truly wanted to ruin TikTok, they should convince Elon Musk to buy it.

Nothing Newsmax said ’bout the election is interesting, but they do whore out their own documentary for 1/6, where they whiteknight the people involved in the attempted insurrection & complain ’bout their mistreatment, which, if true, is the tastiest karma considering the mistreatment Republicans wrought gainst middle-easterners in Guantanamo Bay, a prison that Republicans like to pretend doesn’t exist.

Real crimes were committed by protesters on Jan. 6. Yet, in the aftermath, the political party in power weaponized the Department of Justice, FBI, and other agencies — leading to unprecedented civil-rights violations of U.S. citizens who engaged in those protests.

¿How ignorant or dishonest do you have to be to call 100 or so people being mistreated “unprecedented civil-rights violations of U.S. citizens”? ¿Have they ne’er heard ’bout black people? “Like, yeah, all those lynchings were bad & all, but they’re nothing compared to a few white people not being able to clip their nails”. The only thing that makes this “unprecedented” is that it’s white conservatives being fucked for once; Republicans are fine when black people are mistreated all the time or Vietnam protesters or

I thought ’bout diving into the cesspool Truth Social, but they want my email & phone #, & fuck that. This may ’splain better than the midterms why their shares are falling fast.

Meanwhile, we have this perfect example for why nobody should take Twitter pundits ( or any pundits ) seriously when they make grand armchair theories ’bout what will win elections ( which makes one wonder why they’re giving this amazing advice ’way for free on Twitter & not charging millions for this priceless advice ):

pic.twitter.com/GLZgSgn9Nj

— ChudsOfTikTok (@ChudsOfTikTok) November 9, 2022

For the record, I actually know the 1 true trick that works for winning elections, which is to promise to have the government subsidize free Taco Bell e’ery Friday to e’ery American citizen ( when elected blame conflicted legislature for the failure to pass the Taco Bell bill ); show up as a wrestler on WWF, the World Wildlife Fund; stand up gainst half-assed remakes o’ classic video games; & spend e’ery presidential speech talking ’bout what small penises & vaginas e’ery other politician has. I am awaiting my Pulitzer now.

On totally-not-a-nazi Ben Garrison’s site, Tina Toon drew this wonderful political drawing that should be put up on the fridge right ’long with their 3rd-grade math quiz. It’s nice to see people artistically influenced by that person who did the Sonichu comics.

Finally, the New York Post gives us the news we always wanted to hear: “Florida Man Makes Announcement”:

Think Murdochs are done with Trump? This morning's Foxnews website: lead story DeSantis (not Poland)–Trump's announcement is 3 levels down–underneath Fetterman and Madoff, next to the Gender Unicorn! pic.twitter.com/gjdgOKvF8T

— Tony Iovino (@TonyIovino3) November 16, 2022

But to those who worry that Trump may be too ol’ to run, being the same age as Biden, who was frequently lambasted for his age, when he became president, Fox News has you covered: “People age @ different rates”. So Fox News thinks Trump is a time-traveler. That’s nothing out o’ the ordinary for them.

Anyway, that’s all I can tolerate o’ this nuclear waste. Hopefully that will be all for any political content for… hopefully till November 2023, but I don’t think The Atlantic will be able to wait that long to release a stupid article defending water poisoning or paedophilia or something.

Whether the Democrats manage to eke out a hopelessly debilitated slight majority unable to pass anything ’cause 1 Democrat doesn’t like it or leave a slight Republican majority that will spend the next 2 years trolling Democrats & also not getting anything done, we can all agree that we have a victory for photography from The Rolling Stone:

I don’t know if they just take video & pick out the best clips or if they’re just that good @ getting the perfectly awkward photos, but chef’s kiss, either way.

& he has good reason to cheer ( I think that face he’s making might be cheering ): by his own count — since these are certainly not the #s anyone else sees in our mortal realm — he received 219 all-caps “WINS”, which are quadruple the value o’ lowercase “wins” & 175% the value o’ titlecase “Wins” & only 16 titlecase “Losses”:

This gives me the great opportunity to do what I neglected to do in 2020:

Apparently Boebert didn’t lose quite yet, & may end up winning, which means that all the news stories I read were full o’ lies. You can tell how shocked I am.

I have to say, beyond the pure joy o’ seeing conservatives angry, which, admittedly, is worth cheering ’nough, I don’t know why Democrats are so excited. It looks like Republicans may still take both the house & the senate, & the claims that the Republicans failing to do well during a year like 2022, when there should be a wave, & thus this means they’ll do e’en worse in 2024, shows a remarkable lack o’ self-awareness: if 2022 can be a ne’er-seen-that-before-greetings-from-Germany-kick-cancer’s-butt election year, ¿why can’t 2024? After all, e’eryone expected Democrats to cream Republicans in 2016 & they failed miserably. I don’t see how the outcome o’ this election means shit for 2024, other than mo’ Democrat governors & mo’ Democrats in state legislatures means electoral advantages for Democrats in future elections.

They called you cockroaches.

They called you cult members.

They called you extremists.

They called you terrorists.

Today, we call them losers!#RedWave

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) November 8, 2022

Boebert has been wrong ’bout many things, but she’s right here — we are calling them losers.

While it’s still round, I’m just going to put this here, which, 538, to their honesty, still keeps up, so we can laugh @ them if they’re wrong. Or, if they turn out correct after all, laugh @ the armchair theorists who constantly whine ’bout polls. Either way, we get to dunk on people.

But regardless o’ how relatively well Democrats do this year, we can still say a’least that New York Centrist Democrats known for pragmatism are utter failures. Considering this is the same wonderful state that gave us Trump, Rudi Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, or hell, e’en Hillary Clinton, since she deserves half the blame for the disaster that was 2016, I can’t say I’m surprised that they would find mo’ terrible politicos with which to self-own themselves.

New Republic points out what e’eryone knows, that most media are lame & let themselves get tricked by a tiny minority o’ whiny Chuds that inflation & crime which is higher in red states that didn’t e’en cut their police’s funds than in cities are the only things that matter & that abortion wouldn’t make a difference. They are definitely right ’bout media trying to make Restful Joe look like the most hated president since Andrew Jackson being ridiculous: only Republicans, who are contractually obligated to make e’ery Democrat seem like the worst that has e’er happened, & doomer nihilist far leftists, who just hate Biden mo’ than Trump ’cause they’re contrarian edgelords, give a shit ’bout Biden, while the vast majority o’ Americans couldn’t be bothered to have the weakest o’ feelings ’bout the president or e’en remember who the president is.

I received a wondrous omen yesterday when I decided, out o’ curiosity, to make my yearly peek into DailyKos & was greeted with this powerful combination:

I knew it’d be a suckerpop anime girl who would finally save US democracy.

All the signs indicate that the forewarned red tsunami — not the sexy communist 1, but the fake fascist 1 masquerading in blood — will not come, but that the house will turn red, but the senate may stay blue. To be truthful, I’ve mostly ignored the polls, since polls ain’t shit, & e’en mo’ than polls, I’ve ignored armchair-theorizing pundit hacks who mistake their own petty hatred o’ Democrats ’cause Sanders, given a role in the current Democratic regime, was robbed o’ his rightful primary victory lost ’cause most young people are dumb & lazy & don’t bother to vote in primaries with the general sentiment of ordinary Americans who don’t give a rats ass ’bout Sanders or socialism & probably blame some vague form o’ Sorosian socialism they were told is causing all this inflation by their favorite YouTube channel or they mistake the general sentiments of ordinary Americans as being sick o’ all this mean civility ’tween mildly patronizing Democrats & murderously crazy Republicans, ignorant o’ the fact that most Americans don’t give a shit, they’d probably love to see government officials bash each others’ brains out with hammers. If these liars truly believed in bipartisanship & bothsidesism, they would advocate for sacrificing Mitch McConnel’s wife to the hammer, too, but as it turns out, e’eryone lies when they say they support bipartisanship ’cause, as it turns out, bipartisanship is the dumbest thing in the world.

Much mo’ fascinating is the statistic I found that 60% o’ Americans have election deniers on their ballots, which is to say that only 60% o’ candidates have finally reached enlightenment & have realized that till the Engelsist Magical Socialist Party’s candidates win e’ery election, e’ery election is a fraud. I can only assume that when the deniers win they’ll attempt to insurrect themselves, since surely they wouldn’t only deny election results where they don’t win — no, not my honest pals, the Republicans.

Daily Kos tells me that the race ’tween Patty Murray & Smiley here in Washington was expected to be a tossup. Considering Smiley was a rando nurse whose blurb sounded like it belonged to an airport novel, not a politician, that is horrifying to hear. Luckily, like many things, the pundits turned out to be wrong & we can forget that Smiley e’er existed.

Other fun races — ¡wheeee!:

The 1 e’eryone had been looking @, to the point that apparently a New Yorker tried to vote for Dr. Oz: unsurprisingly, real candidate whose only major electoral flaw was having a stroke, & thus having their clearness o’ speech only slightly better than the average Republican, beats clownshow TV doctor.

Famed nutjob Lauren Boebert who was infamously accused o’ s’posedly leading tours thru the capitol before 1/6 lost to who cares, all that matters is that she lost.

Many are noting that wacky Trump-favored candidates like Oz are losing in places where a sane Republican would’ve won, which leads me to reconsider e’eryone’s claim that Democrats deliberately funding these crazy candidates was typical bad Dem strategy.

I still fret that I didn’t make optimal use o’ my most recent Halloween Break, including wasting a day working on that weird Voter’s Pamphlet post that wasn’t that clever; but I can a’least feel better that I didn’t waste the most important day, Halloween itself, publishing the most revolting form o’ COVID-denial apologetics from 1 o’ the most deranged economists — & we’re talking ’bout economists, the realm that gave us such serious ideas as that forcing woman to let incels rape them ( or giving incels sexbots ) is the same as income redistribution — in the world.

That article is “Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty”, written by some economist named Emily Oster, who I will ’ventually show you has o’erthrown Noah Smith as emperor o’ troll economists.

In April 2020, with nothing else to do, my family took an enormous number of hikes.

I want to remind you that this is s’posedly an “economist”. I spent COVIDtime reading books, which you can do very easily inside, ’cause that’s how you learn ’bout things, something this “economist” should have tried.

We all wore cloth masks that I had made myself.

Which are much less effective than masks made by actual professionals, which was as shocking for me to find out as that time I found out that professional doctors are much better @ treating diseases than some rando next door who “read some things online”.

We had a family hand signal, which the person in the front would use if someone was approaching on the trail and we needed to put on our masks.

¿So this person’s family are such idiot-savants when it comes to visual abilities that they can see a tiny hand signal before them, but not full-sized humans approaching them?

¿What relevance does this ridiculously contrived fable have to do with anything?

Once, when another child got too close to my then-4-year-old son on a bridge, he yelled at her “SOCIAL DISTANCING!”

Check off on the bingo card, “Makes up bullshit exaggerated story wherein the protagonist runs into Jack-Chick-worthy strawmen who want to disembowel anyone who doesn’t obey the tribal ways o’ The Mask”. I live round Seattle, 1 o’ the most leftwing places in the US, & people didn’t say shit if they encountered someone without a mask ­— probably ’cause they presumed they were right-wing extremists & didn’t want to hear them start ranting ’bout the Illuminati. E’en if most people round you do think you’re assholes for not wearing masks, they were probably smart ’nough to realize that yelling @ you wasn’t going to magically make you not assholes anymo’, but would probably make you dig your heels in further — as the existence o’ this article proves.

These precautions were totally misguided. In April 2020, no one got the coronavirus from passing someone else hiking.

I’m going to need a big, fat, fucking citation needed for that. ( Fun fact: if you compare newspapers like The Atlantic to my stoner blog you will find to your shock & horror that I oft cite sources mo’ than they do, ’cause newspapers oft like to just coast on their pretend authority than follow basic academic standards ).

Our cloth masks made out of old bandanas wouldn’t have done anything, anyway.

Yes, that’s ’cause you weren’t wearing real masks, you fuckface.

But the thing is: We didn’t know.

“¡It’s Fauci’s fault my family were all hopeless dumbasses!”.

I have been reflecting on this lack of knowledge thanks to a class I’m co-teaching at Brown University on COVID.

If she had any self-awareness, such reflection would have been, “Wow, it sure is impressive that they hired me to teach a class on a subject I know absolutely nothing about. The US sure is a meritocracy”.

We’ve spent several lectures reliving the first year of the pandemic, discussing the many important choices we had to make under conditions of tremendous uncertainty.

Read: “I wasted my class’s time & money talking ’bout shit that has nothing to do with science”.

To take an example close to my own work, there is an emerging (if not universal) consensus that schools in the U.S. were closed for too long: The health risks of in-school spread were relatively low, whereas the costs to students’ well-being and educational progress were high.

This writer shows herself to be just as ignorant o’ linguistics as biology: a consensus is universal — it’s an inherent part o’ its definition. If it’s not universal, it’s mere majority, not consensus.

2nd, e’en a fervent supporter o’ democracy like me has the awareness to realize the unfortunate truth that objective, materialist science isn’t based on fucking elections. The fact that the average slackjawed moron, fed junkfood misinformation like The Atlantic, thinks children have magic COVID immunity doesn’t make it true, anymo’ than the fact that 81% o’ Americans believe there’s an invisible man in the sky who runs e’erything makes it true. Americans are dumb: their opinion is worth less than a coin flip.

Nowhere does this “economist” e’en try to look into alternatives that could serve both problems, which would’ve been real compromise, ’cause that would require some semblance o’ curiosity & independent thought, which almost all economists lack. People ( read: right-wing hacks ) assume that falling education came from children not being physically next to each other, & not the lack o’ preparedness or lack o’ resources from skinflint governments drugged up on the religion o’ “Fuck the Poor” capitalism. Hell, the psychological trauma o’ COVID could’ve by itself caused the decline; there’s no proof that the decline wouldn’t have happened if schools didn’t close, or that it wouldn’t have been worsened by children’s fears — whether based on realistic facts or exaggerated — o’ getting COVID themselves. Indeed, the fact that schools that stayed closed longer didn’t have worse effects than those that didn’t & the Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics’s own conclusion on the data imply this. This is specially since the worst effect was on math, which is the subject that should need physical presence the least & can most easily be handled with computers. Also, Americans have always been hopeless @ math — which is amazing when you consider what a STEMlord country it is & that Americans are e’en worse @ liberal arts like sociology, philosophy ( I can’t name a single good American philosopher ), &, as seen here, economists ( also no good American economists — all the English greats, like Adam Smith, Keynes, & Joan Robinson, are from the UK, while we’re stuck with Paul Samuelson, Milton Fucking Friedman, & Paul Krugman, which is like comparing bands like Nirvana & Alice in Chains to Nickelback & Creed ).

But, yeah, it would have made mo’ sense to cost mo’ lives so Americans can become slightly less terrible @ math.

Another example: When the vaccines came out, we lacked definitive data on the relative efficacies of the Johnson & Johnson shot versus the mRNA options from Pfizer and Moderna. The mRNA vaccines have won out. But at the time, many people in public health were either neutral or expressed a J&J preference. This misstep wasn’t nefarious. It was the result of uncertainty.

This is the lamest o’ Appeal to Perfection fallacies e’er. Either way people were @ risk, so this was a case o’ the “least bad scenario”. The FDA themselves continued recommending the J&J vaccine as better than nothing. Only a mental child would think that during a deadly pandemic nobody should e’er have risks or make mistakes when rushing e’er.

Misinformation was, and remains, a huge problem. But most errors were made by people who were working in earnest for the good of society.

Also an unproven claim & irrelevant: people who are “working in earnest” but know they know nothing o’ biology are still dangerously irresponsible. If I hijacked a a tank “for the good o’ society”, nobody’s going to give a shit how earnest I am, other than whether or not to have me sent to an asylum.

Given the amount of uncertainty, almost every position was taken on every topic. And on every topic, someone was eventually proved right, and someone else was proved wrong. In some instances, the right people were right for the wrong reasons. In other instances, they had a prescient understanding of the available information.

This is straight-up my parody o’ centrists, O’Beefe: “Look, 1 side says that murder is necessary, the other side says that it is merely sometimes useful” ( who, relevantly, would later turn out to be the equivalent o’ the alt-right ). I swear to you that US-brand centrism is the biggest mental cancer in the world.

The people who got it right, for whatever reason, may want to gloat.

I can’t fucking believe this tremendous misunderstanding o’ how both objective reality & humans work. That’s right, all ideas are a guessing game: people who used their knowledge o’ biology, which is based on peer-reviewed studies & centuries o’ information, just “guessed right”. When I make a website @ work, it’s not ’cause I studied programming for years & know how the web works; I just happened to be lucky that day & can maybe feel the reason to gloat for my good gut instinct. This is the kind o’ idea only someone with no knowledge or skill in anything could think — pathetic & spiteful. The idea that this smug asshole trying to manufacture a “truce” when her side is clearly the wrong side o’ history is accusing people who were trying to prevent deaths o’ just wanting to gloat is colossal projection.

Those who got it wrong, for whatever reason, may feel defensive and retrench into a position that doesn’t accord with the facts.

“Me, for instance”.

All of this gloating and defensiveness continues to gobble up a lot of social energy and to drive the culture wars, especially on the internet.

Yes, policies that are life & death for millions is just culture war bullshit, but empty civility & decorum are vital.

& you yourself are writing on the internet. But sure, it’s e’eryone else who’s a crybaby.

These discussions are heated, unpleasant and, ultimately, unproductive.

You’re right, but you decided to write this article &, e’en mo’ perplexing, The Atlantic decided to publish it, so here we are.

And, similarly, getting something wrong wasn’t a moral failing.

No, but it is a mental failing, &, mo’ importantly, insisting you’re right with whate’er disarray o’ propaganda articles you wrote or whate’er inklings you made up in your head when you know you have less knowledge than experts who spent decades studying this subject is a moral failing, as you’re putting your pride as a “free thinker” ’bove actually helping society.

Treating pandemic choices as a scorecard on which some people racked up more points than others is preventing us from moving forward.

This is completely contradictory: by this writer’s own perspective, all decisions are based on luck, there is no free will, & therefore whether or not we move forward is out of our control, just as whether or not taking a vaccine was apparently a coin flip. In these times o’ uncertainty, whether or not “treating pandemic choices as a scorecard on which some people racked up more points than others” prevents us from moving forward could be right or could be wrong, & those o’ us who think that insulting idiots like this writer will help us “move forward” could be right, & if we’re not, well, we’re not to blame, ¿’cause how could we know? ¡There’s too much uncertainty! I love this implication that complex sociopolitical philosophical issues are far simpler than hard, materialist sciences like biology. Yes, this idiot’s simplistic, trite moralizing is rock solid, but how viruses & vaccines work is pure witchcraft.

We have to put these fights aside and declare a pandemic amnesty.

¿Why not? ¿Is officially pardoning an insentient disease any worse than Roger Stone? No, ’course not — they’re the same thing.

We can leave out the willful purveyors of actual misinformation [—]

As we will see, this writer is 1 o’ them.

[—] while forgiving the hard calls that people had no choice but to make with imperfect knowledge.

Nope, ’cause they had a very easy choice: listen to the people who did have knowledge. Their preference for listening to charlatans o’er actual scientists is a social failing, & the kind o’ person who makes this mistake is going to make the same mistake ’gain & ’gain & will continue to be a burden on society, evident by the fact that this idiot, having not been content to cause harm in the world by their idiocy, is still writing articles.

Los Angeles County closed its beaches in summer 2020. Ex post facto, this makes no more sense than my family’s masked hiking trips.

¿What? That’s a very hard accomplishment, since your family’s hiking tricks made no sense other than that you were bored & couldn’t be bothered to read real science.

But we need to learn from our mistakes and then let them go.

Keep in mind, e’en if we accept the assertion that the spread o’ COVID outside is mitigated by wind ( which is not the same as impossible ), we’re comparing the mistake o’ killing people to the mistake o’ not letting people enjoy the beach. The latter is sad, but hardly criminal. The fact that this writer thinks people who might have cost people time in the rays might have just as much to apologize for as people who helped people die is deranged & I’m amazed that this writer can have such lack o’ sense o’ shame that she can show her face in public, much less write for a newspaper, without having to wear a paper bag o’er her face. ( ¿But are paper bags truly effective @ protecting disgraceful people from their deep shame? There’s a lot o’ uncertainty ).

Because I thought schools should reopen and argued that kids as a group were not at high risk, I was called a “teacher killer” and a “génocidaire.”

Note that she only argued that kids were not @ high risk, so she made this recommendation with the full consciousness that she was putting teachers, specially ol’ teachers, @ risk o’ dying, & therefore, it is, in fact, accurate to call her a “teacher killer”, since she admits right here to knowingly recommending a scenario that would lead to mo’ deaths o’ teachers. But, ’gain, since COVID-deniers have no free will due to all that magical postmodern uncertainty, she can’t be a teacher killer, or anything, truly, since e’erything is in our minds.

It wasn’t pleasant, but feelings were high.

It is much mo’ important that we pay our respects to the dead feelings o’ this rich, spoiled fauxeconomist who has no place writing ’bout biology @ all than the people who died, declares virulent narcissist.

And I certainly don’t need to dissect and rehash that time for the rest of my days.

Then maybe you shouldn’t have written this article.

Student test scores have shown historic declines, more so in math than in reading, and more so for students who were disadvantaged at the start. We need to collect data, experiment, and invest. Is high-dosage tutoring more or less cost-effective than extended school years? Why have some states recovered faster than others? We should focus on questions like these, because answering them is how we will help our children recover.

“Anyway, fuck the millions who died & the millions mo’ with lifelong health problems. Let’s focus on my personal bugbear”. I specially love how irrelevant high-dosage tutoring vs. extended school years is & how it’s focused on “cost-effectiveness”, rather than efficacy. Any halfway knowledgeable economist should know that the US wastes their money on the stupidest shit right & left & that any talk o’ “cost-effectiveness” is futile.

Notably, routine vaccination rates for children (for measles, pertussis, etc.) are way down. Rather than debating the role that messaging about COVID vaccines had in this decline, we need to put all our energy into bringing these rates back up.

Yes, let’s try to solve a problem by deliberately refusing to examine the roots o’ said problem. To be fair, that is how economists typically try to solve economic problems, which is why they suck @ that, too.

Pediatricians and public-health officials will need to work together on community outreach[.]

They can start by recommending all their patients to stay ’way from The Atlantic & only read actually informative news sources.

The standard saying is that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. But dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a repetitive doom loop as well.

There’s a reason this 2nd sentence isn’t a standard saying: it’s complete nonsense. It’s only doom for the jackasses who made these “mistakes”. After all, ostracizing these people & news sources will create disincentives from fostering misinformation in the future, thereby making it less likely to happen in the future. You’d think an economist would know that, but as we’ve discussed many times, economists only understand personal responsibility when it comes to lowerclass people. Normal people should, ’course, be fired for bad results, but when an economist makes “mistakes”, we shouldn’t fire that economist from e’er writing for our paper, but continue giving them opportunities ( & thereby taking that opportunity from others ), despite doing nothing to merit it. This is the kind o’ meritocratic capitalist system that economists like this, who benefit quite well from it, strangely support a lot.

This writer has been very vague & evasive ’bout the “mistakes” that some nebulous people made. Let’s turn to Abigail Cartus, Ph.D, MPH & Justin Feldman, Sc.D, MPH @ Protean for background:

But despite its prominence, Oster’s work on COVID in schools has attracted little scrutiny—even though it has been funded since last summer by organizations that, without exception, have explicit commitments to opposing teacher’s unions, supporting charter schools, and expanding corporate freedom. In addition to grants from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Walton Family Foundation, and Arnold Ventures, Oster has received funding from far-right billionaire Peter Thiel. The Thiel grant awarded to Oster was administered by the Mercatus Center, the think tank founded and financed by the Koch family.

¡Le shock! ¡An economist accepting bribes awards for their studied work from rich, “libertarian” organizations — which, in their hate for government involvement, obsessively spend their money on influencing government; “laissez-faire” isn’t French for “rich people control people like dictators” for no reason — to give false authority to pseudoscience that benefits them! ¡But Volcker told me that the only asset economists had was their credibility! Well, Oster sold hers for a quick quid.

Note that liberal fascist The Atlantic ’gain gives a voice to someone under the patronage o’ the far-right — “liberal” media @ its finest.

Still, that’s hardly the worst thing one could —

But the headline statement in the new AAP report is the oft-repeated mantra that “no amount of alcohol should be considered safe in pregnancy.” Media reports have seized on this statement to renew a debate about the dangers of light drinking during pregnancy. Rather than acknowledging the obvious dangers of heavier drinking and working to address the circumstances that lead to it, we are back to discussing whether pregnant women should be shamed for having a half a glass of wine on their anniversary—or any old night.

To me, this highlights the very real downside of recommendations like this one, which do not involve any nuance. The bottom line is that while there is clear evidence of the dangers of heavy drinking—especially binge drinking—in pregnancy, the same cannot be said for low levels of alcohol consumption. As even the AAP report acknowledges, there is consensus on this issue. A large share of OBs in the U.S. report telling their pregnant patients that some alcohol is fine.

That is from Time magazine, by the way, which is, coincidentally, also 1 o’ the worst newspapers in the US. Unsurprisingly, the only academic source I could see who bothered to comment on this obvious troll had strong disagreements.

OK, that was a weird opinion to die on her sword for, but —

Emily Oster re-examines the stats on AIDS in Africa from an economic perspective and reaches a stunning conclusion: Everything we know about the spread of HIV on the continent is wrong.

O… O, dear god, no…

[T]to understand this you need to think about health the way than an economist does — as an investment. So if you’re a software engineer and you’re trying to think about whether to add some new functionality to your program, it’s important to think about how much it costs. It’s also important to think about what the benefit is. And one part of that benefit is how much longer you think this program is going to be active. If version 10 is coming out next week, there’s no point in adding more functionality into version nine.

I want to note that she isn’t e’en right ’bout software versioning here: for most software, version 9 would continue to receive updates, mainly security updates, for plenty o’ time after version 10 comes out, ’cause people don’t all update to the next version right ’way. Some can’t ’cause new versions usually introduce incompatibilities with other software. Considering the newsworthy controversies o’er decades-ol’ Windows operating systems finally having their support ended e’ery time it happens, I’m surprised she didn’t know this.

But your health decisions are the same. Every time you have a carrot instead of a cookie, every time you go to the gym instead of going to the movies, that’s a costly investment in your health.

I wish I were surprised, but, yes, this truly is how many economists think. This is what happens when economists think economics is nothing but math & whate’er gut instincts they come up with, ignoring all other sciences. Yes, eating a cookie ’stead o’ a carrot is just like having sex with someone who might have AIDS, ’cept all the many biological ways it’s completely different.

Actually, despite what many online have been gossiping ’bout, this talk isn’t ’bout how spending money on AIDS treatment is a waste o’ money, but spending money on AIDS education is a waste o’ money compared to… decreasing trade — which is, admittedly, a shocking admission from a mainstream economist, who usually consider trade to be the best thing e’er fore’er. There seems to be no talk o’ decreasing spending on the general problem o’ AIDS in Africa. TED Talks probably demand far higher taste than vulgar The Atlantic & Time, so she couldn’t go full mask-off ( pun not intended ).

That said, the talk does end rather tastelessly:

But more than anything, you know, I’m an academic. And when I leave here, I’m going to go back and sit in my tiny office, and my computer, and my data. And the thing that’s most exciting about that is every time I think about research, there are more questions. There are more things that I think that I want to do. And what’s really, really great about being here is I’m sure that the questions that you guys have are very, very different than the questions that I think up myself. And I can’t wait to hear about what they are. So thank you very much.

I have ne’er seen someone so excited & eager ’bout people dying o’ AIDS.

Anyway, her arguments are debatable, considering the simplistic assumptions in this admittedly short talk —

O, ¿what’s that, Forbes?

This shift in focus raises the question: Is treatment the right solution? In my work I have assumed that our goal in the face of the epidemic is to maximize life. In other words, to save the most years of life with the funding available. Once I decided this, the cost-benefit calculations that economists are so familiar with told me how.

As cold and callous as this may sound, after comparing the number of years saved by antiretrovirals with years saved by other interventions like education, I found that treatment is not an effective way to combat the epidemic. It may be that my conclusions are best laid aside in the name of morality and compassion. But in making the tough decisions about how to spend limited resources, we should understand the economic consequences of our choices.

Ah, here we go. Now, Forbes, they allow you to go full sociopath. There can be no nobler death than to sacrifice yourself to capitalist efficiency, specially if you’re poor.

That’s obviously a wrenching question. But if we choose treatment, we must know what we are giving up. The tradeoffs are there whether we want to face them or not. What economics can do is tell us–in numbers, in black and white–what we give up and what we gain.

We recently developed a simple, easy solution: give up dumbass loser Elon Musk throwing his money down the drain on Twitter so he can shitpost Bill Gates pregnant memes, pour Twitter down the drain like rancid milk, & give that $44 billion to AIDS treatment. I love how economists try to contrive these imaginary tough decisions as if the world doesn’t waste 99% o’ its resources on the dumbest shit. Economists would make their jobs a lot easier if they just recommended giving up shit like Elon Musk — hell, that’s a win-win.

Anyway, I’m intrigued by this new development o’ 4chan Science, clearly meant purely to troll & bolster itself on its clickbaiting audacity rather than any serious thought ’hind them. I thought the era o’ edgelordism might’ve been o’er, but I was wrong. ¡There was just too much uncertainty! Hopefully we can agree to an amnesty toward those who mistakenly believed that the era o’ edgelordism was o’er & that ’twas safe for us to leave our homes without being subjected to cringe.