Brooklyn Nine Nine is Reno 911 for theater kids

The arrest of the apparent billionaire investor Jeffrey Epstein at a New Jersey airport on Saturday on federal charges for crimes he was accused of during the Bush administration should not be surprising to anyone who has followed the news carefully. He may have escaped in 2008 with a ludicrous one-year stint in a county jail that he was allowed to leave six days a week, but his name has never quite been out of the headlines. Between 2008 and 2015 Epstein reportedly settled more than a dozen lawsuits from Jane Does alleging sexual assault; the youngest of his alleged victims was 14 years old.

The only question is why did it take this long? Why was the ludicrous deal that gave Epstein and his fellow conspirators immunity in exchange for a slap-on-the-wrist jail sentence ever allowed to go through in the first place?

The most obvious answer is, of course, that Epstein knows people. Lots of people. A list of his reported friends, business associates, and legal counselors reads like a #MeToo and Manhattan sleazebag All-Star team, with a few stringers pulled in from the media and both political parties: Woody Allen, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Mort Zuckerman, Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, Alan Dershowitz, Ken Starr, Katie Couric, George Stephanopoulos, the current president of the United States. The obscene deal that kept Epstein out of what could easily have been a life sentence in prison was negotiated by Alexander Acosta, the current Secretary of Labor, who was then a federal prosecutor in Florida. In 2002, Graydon Carter, the longtime editor of Vanity Fair, removed references to Epstein’s sexual activity from a profile, including testimony from alleged victims, according to the article’s author. “He’s sensitive about the young women,” Carter is said to have explained. Won’t somebody please not think of the children?

It will be at least another week before 2,000 or so pages of documents related to Epstein’s exploits will be released following the order of an appeals court last week. When we finally see them we will likely be able to answer questions about the identities of the “numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well‐known Prime Minister, and other world leaders” who have also been accused of sexual abuse by Epstein’s alleged victims. Is one of them a Razorbacks football fan? Who was the “famous prime minister”? Was Trump speaking from personal experience when he said in 2002 that Epstein “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side”?

We should keep all of this in mind the next time we feel inclined to sneer at so-called “low-information voters,” especially the kookier sort. You know the people I mean. Wackos. Gun nuts. 8channers. Conspiracy theorists in Middle America who watch InfoWars (one of the few journalistic outlets to discuss the issue of pedophilia regularly) and post about QAnon and “spirit cooking” and the lizard people. The news that a globalized cabal of billionaires and politicians and journalists and Hollywood bigwigs might be flying around the world raping teenaged girls will not surprise them in the least because it is what they have long suspected. For the rest of us it is like finding out that the Jersey Devil is real or turning on cable news and finding Anderson Cooper and his panel engaged in a matter-of-fact discussion of Elvis’s residence among the Zixls on the 19th moon of Dazotera.

Among other things, the Epstein case forces us to ask ourselves some uncomfortable questions about the real meaning of “fake” news. There is, or should be, more to being informed than fact-checking formalism. If you have spent the last few years earnestly consuming mainstream left-of-center media in this country you will be under the impression that the United States has fallen under the control of a spray-tanned Mussolini clone who is never more than five minutes away from making birth control illegal. If you watch Fox News and read conservative publications, you no doubt bemoan the fact that Ronald Reagan’s heir is being hamstrung by a bunch of avocado toast-eating feminist witches. Meanwhile, Alex Jones’s audience will tell you that America, like the rest of the world, is ruled by a depraved internationalist elite whose ultimate allegiance is not to countries or political parties or ideologies but to one another. These people believe in nothing. They will safeguard their wealth and privilege at any cost. They will never break rank. And they will commit unspeakable crimes with impunity, while anyone who dares to speculate openly is sued or hounded out of public life as a kook.

Which of these worldviews is closest to the truth?

On the plus side, at least I get good mileage out of this reaction image.

THE BEST 

“it may look like i made a whole series of games about man ass, but i am not gay.”

Thank god I remembered to share this before june ends

Ding dong the witch is dead

>Sarkeesian has stopped trying to earn money from Feminist Frequency >All other employees from FemFreq have been fired >no more videos >only voluntary podcasts (that nobody are watching, 2000 views at quarter mill subs - LOL)

She hasn’t even paid those employees for a while. Guess that attempt to intimidate CDprojectRed into hiring her as a consultant didn’t work very well

Don’t forget the part where she fucked over everyone who helped her

Ya know this makes me wonder whatever became of the game she and the rest of her staff, tried to make.

“Once you outlive your usefulness you no longer exist”

Damn I lost count of how many times I said that. It’s funny how these people always think they’re untouchable until it happens. I hope it was worth it.

“gamergate can fuck off too”

Gamergate was telling you this exact shit back when Zoe first started her bullshit. If you’d listened back then, or at least attempted to have an open mind instead of dismissing anyone outside your tribe, you and a lot of other people might have avoided those hardships you’re so upset about now. It’s been publicly documented for years what kind of person Zoe is. But because you didn’t like the source you dismissed the info. My sympathy is limited.

“My sympathy is limited”

Frankly, my sympathy isn’t there.

If everyone tells you to not proceed because someone is abusive as fuck, and you go ahead and get involved with them anyway, that’s entirely on you.

You can’t just blindly trust people because they share a circumstance of birth like skin colour or gender. You need to actually look at all the information to determine whether a backlash is only percieved, or if the individual is truly a piece of shit.

At some point you need to realise that most people labelled as the worst people out there aren’t anywhere near that description.

Is it right how these people have been treated?

No.

Is it unexpected?

No.

Apparently everyone saw it coming but them.

“we weren’t expecting to get conned!” report former employees of con artist

sucks to suck don’t it

Honestly, I’m not sure I can feel any enjoyment on this shit happening. I feel no joy in being right about where it was all headed and what became of the people who got scammed and mislead.

They were victims of a con artist, plain and simple. Lead to believe they were involved in something meaningful and righteous. You see the other side getting their just desserts but, after leaving this “war” a couple years ago I’ve come to see that the same goes for everyone involved, no matter what side of the theoretical argument you’re on.

They’re not different than the people who started to fall deeply into alt-right bullshit after being lured over from a moderate view by a sense of purpose, of being a part of something important, fighting for “justice”

They were conned and manipulated, through and through. 

Whether someone followed Zoe or Anita to the ends of the earth, believing in their purpose or someone followed Milo or Sargon, or any of the many “third party, but still leaning to one side” commentators that made a name for themselves by commenting on everything happening

Each and every one of them were victims of cons and manipulations from people who had something to benefit or gain from the perpetual discourse machine staying in motion. It generates clicks, views, donations, publicity, opportunities. 

Opportunities for nobodies like Anita or Zoe to hurl themselves into the spotlight as poor victims who deserve to be showered in praise and money

or nobodies like Milo or Sargon to.. well, do the same samn thing

Each and every one of them took advantage of peoples beliefs and passions, selling them on grand ideas of justice and improvement to society

It was all a stupid internet war perpetuated by foul, manipulative people

And while comparisons to shit like nazis or soviets or whatever extreme political views anyone would want to connect to any of them were certainly fun to make they left everyone with an intense unease and paranoia, from the bottom to the top, so to speak. 

It tore apart communities, groups and even circles of friends apart by banging out the marching orders through the new outages and offenses, all of the important figures, the generals, the lieutenants, the commanding officers would tell everyone what to be mad about that week and it would all play out one way or another

Nobody can casually enjoy media anymore without the self-appointed gestapo or soviet secret police going around and starting discourse with people about it all

The “believers”, the “muckrakers” who go around screenshotting problematic opinions for THEIR circles to tut tut and titter over to keep the status quo of hostility and marching in line to your “beliefs”, even if you don’t personally support or share them you’ll defend them because, well, that’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it?

It’s “civil” and “mature” to be this way, not like the OTHER side who has it ALL WRONG

This internet culture war has been going on for almost 4 years now

It’s time to pull yourselves away from it and look around you

Everyone got taken advantage of by all of this bullshit, even the people you’re arguing with, your “enemies”

It stopped being about the specifics of the kickstarters, the scams, who is worse, which side is wrong, which side is right

and everyone lost sight of what really happened

everyone got taken for a ride by a small group of con artists and manipulators, and it was all kicked off by these same con artists and manipulators taking the confessions and pains of an guy who was abused by his ex-girlfriend, who is a known abuser even BEFORE the gamergate stuff happened, and she was able to manipulate the public at large into seeing it her way 

it’s all been a shitshow from the beginning, and thanks to this nonsense, we’ve normalized ourselves to the idea of smugly enjoying the suffering of others

It’s time to stop and put an end to all of this unnecessary hostility and suffering

Energy company has got some sass

Duke Energy Fined $102 million for Polluting Rivers with Coal Ash

This is the best summary of the corporate deflection of blame for environmental destruction onto the consumer to save face I’ve ever seen

Straight up. Time for some real talk.

If you think a suppressor renders a gun Hollywood movie quiet and/or that suppressors are not already heavily regulated and are easy to obtain legally, you really have no idea what you’re talking about.

Please sit down. You look absolutely foolish.

I waited 11 fucking months for mine.

E

L

E

V

E

N

MONTHS

Same for my first one. And then nine months for my second. That’s a whole ass baby worth of waiting and jumping through federal government hoops.

That’s:

For every time a suppressor is purchased.

Needs to be more regulated my fucking dick.

The ATF itself actually recommends you do the build-a-bear method because they have a different office process those requests. Like the ATF even acknowledges that it’s quicker to just build the damned thing yourself.

One of these days I’m gonna get the tools and the balls to build my own Form 1 can.

My local gun range advertises “conjugal visits” with your suppressor so you can actually use it at their range while you wait for your paperwork as it languishes through the Federal bureaucracy.  

What a great range it must be.

That’s actually pretty common for gun range/store combo type places that also do NFA stuff.

I was not fortunate enough to have that.

Oh no the poor little gun fetishists are having a tantrum that it’s so hard to get a fucking SUPPRESSOR FOR A GODDAMN FUCKING LONG GUN. Poor babies are so oppressed. Thoughts and prayers.

How’s that fucking boot taste?

Who Goes Nazi? Brooklyn Edition

If you’re anything like me, a twenty-something Twitter leftist with an advanced degree in the humanities, you hate absolutely everyone around you and badly want to kill them. You live in a brownstone playground of Timorese food and adult coloring books, and you want to suicide bomb the L train but leave a note blaming it on manspreading or whatever, so people don’t think you’re one of “those” random mass murderers (the bad kind). You hate having to tell people at parties that you “work in content,” and you hate the fact that they all also work in content. You hate that they all make content for outlets that are slightly cooler and more prestigious than the outlets you make content for. You hate that none of them have even fucked you for like thirteen months. You hate that you can’t even hate them for the ways in which they’re different to you, because there aren’t any. But fear not! There’s one thing you’ve got that nobody else does: you know that you’re definitely, 100% Not A Nazi.

But what about them? Imagine if the Nazis took over America and it was suddenly cool and prestigious to be a Nazi, and there were trendy Nazis on the TV the whole time, and they once again sold soap with slogans like “Dove: The White Pride Soap for Hating QTBIPOC and Not Amplifying Their Voices.” But also don’t imagine, because that’s exactly what’s happening.

This game was invented by Dorothy Thompson in her classic 1941 Harpers essay Who Goes Nazi?, in which she presciently pointed out that intellectuals are definitely more Nazi than aristocrats, but not nearly as Nazi as union leaders. But she set her essay at some dinner party in the Hamptons or wherever, and last time I went out there I went swimming in the sea and a wave hit me and I lost my bikini top and a bunch of bros in boat shoes started laughing and pointing at me in a way that despite my white privilege I still feel was somehow like imbued with racism, and then afterwards I just stayed inside for three weeks writing content and ordering groceries online, so the setting needs to be updated. Let’s look at your group DM. Which of these Twitter creatives who live in Brooklyn would go along with it and become a Nazi? (All of them.) And who never, ever would? (Me.)

Mr A isn’t actually in your group DM, and you’ve never encountered anyone like him irl, but you literally can’t stop talking about him, so he gets included anyway. Mr A is a short ugly loser, and he’s already a Nazi. He doesn’t even live in Brooklyn, he lives in his mother’s basement, and eats chicken tenders, and he doesn’t get laid, but in a different way to the way you don’t get laid, which has to do with patriarchy. Mr A is a Pizzagate. Mr A is a Gamergate. Mr A is a segregationist. Mr A opposes the reforms of the Emperor Diocletian (284-305). Mr A won’t shut up about the superiority of a “free silver” bimetallic monetary system over gold specie, and keeps on talking about the “gold shills” in a way that doesn’t really make sense until you realize that your own name is Goldschmidt, and yeah, he doesn’t really care about expansionary monetary policy at all, he’s talking about the Jews, and specifically you. Mr A is basically a pathetic worm whose life sucks and nobody likes him, but also he represents the whole of the repressive forces of society and he’s at the top of the social hierarchy. Everyone you’ve ever met is actually Mr A, wearing various masks. He is the source of all your problems. He must be killed, and once we kill him, we need to find more people like him to be the source of any problems we have left over.

Mr B is in your group DM, but you also have a separate group DM with everyone else except Mr B in it. He keeps trying so hard to be nice, and says stuff like “so how is everyone’s day today” with a smiley emoji, and when you’re talking to him you get this airless feeling like you’re about to suffocate in his treacly good-natured presence. Every time you see Mr B at a party you’re afraid that he’s going to blurt out that he loves you, but you can’t keep your distance too much because he’s so clearly autistic, and you don’t want to be ableist. Anyway once in the group DM he said that while he obviously thought divining for water with Y-shaped copper rods was good and important and valid, he didn’t understand what it had to do with socialism. That made everything better, because clearly he’s a Nazi. The whole group DM expended hours of emotional labor educating him about how dowsing is part of LGBTQ+ culture and how his dismissive bro-y attitude was reactionary and gross, and eventually he posted a video of himself crying and begging for forgiveness and promising to do better, because you guys were the only friends he had. This was classic white fragility, but in the end you let him stay. You just have the other DM now, where you make fun of him and it’s ok, because if the Nazis came and he had license to start being cruel and sadistic to other people, he’d definitely do it.

Ms C is one of those women who doesn’t like other women, and you know this about her because you can’t fucking stand the bitch. Plus she says stuff that’s really not ok, even though it costs nothing to have empathy and be kind. You’ve personally heard her use the D-word, the H-slur, and the L-pejorative, all while laughing and holding a glass of white wine by the stem, like she doesn’t need to consider the harm this does to others, just because she’s “funny” and “an artist.” She’s the Cool Chick. She makes nude self-portraits (the bad, skinny kind), and she’d throw you under the bus in a second for male attention and approval. She’d definitely go Nazi. But the worst thing about her is that she has the impudence to be bisexual and Asian, which makes it really hard to call her out. But then you realized that all Asian people are collectively responsible for the long history of anti-Blackness and misogynoir in their communities, and you’re thinking of holding her collectively responsible for the Rape of Nanking too, once you’re certain she’s a sushi Asian and not the dim sum kind.

Ms D’s boyfriend works in finance, or like accountancy or something, or I think I heard he was a musician? Maybe a drummer or possibly he used to bartend at a place where they had live music. Anyway they definitely have vanilla cishet sex in the missionary position and you can’t stop thinking about it, his body, her body, naked, moving, breathing, together, almost silent, tender, disgusting. She says she’s a socialist but doesn’t devote every minute of her waking life to getting mad about people online. This means she’s just vaguely following a trend, and if the trend were being a Nazi (which it is), she’d be a Nazi (which she therefore is). You can’t imagine yourself actually hitting her but it’d definitely be punching up to maybe poison her food?

Mr E used to be a comrade, but then he did a tweet that got 38.6k RT’s and now he’s moved to Los Angeles to spend his whole time in writers’ rooms. Last you heard he was pitching an animated show for adults about a snail with borderline personality disorder. It hasn’t even been greenlit yet, but you’re already thinking about all the ways in which it will be a missed opportunity and do harm and perpetuate tropes. Mr E will definitely turn out to have been a Nazi, and then you can start an anonymous petition to get the show cancelled so he has to move back to New York. Once he’s back you can send him a long email about how much it sucks his career burned out and how (even though you won’t say it in public) sometimes people do actually take the social-justice thing too far. That way he’ll be a comrade again, which is good, because we believe in rehabilitating people who have a genuine change of heart.

Mr F probably thinks he’s better than you. He’s a union organizer. So are you (you added “#Unionize” to your Twitter name), but his union stuff involves workers who aren’t in tech, content, or grad school, and he probably thinks that makes him more in touch with “the real workers,” who he probably thinks are just a bunch of cis white males in a factory, who are probably all racist and probably have thick, heavy dicks that intrude on your mind in a kinda #MeToo way a lot of the time. He talks about class, and you agree that class is important because you’re not a lib (you support Bernie, you just want him to Do Better). But from the way he says it you’re certain he doesn’t acknowledge all he/him lesbians as part of the working class. He’s trying to save a tiny sector of the workers from a necessary and important socio-economic shift that will impoverish them and make their lives worse, and that’s what being a Nazi is. This is why his union needs to stop dragging their heels, change all of their rules and priorities, and let you get him fired.

Ms G (me) will never go Nazi, because she is beautiful and kind and pure, and has all the good opinions instead of the bad ones. Because of this she’s allowed to do things that other people can’t do. She can totally fail to understand what having an authoritarian personality actually means, and construct a version of the Who Goes Nazi? essay in which the people who go Nazi are just people who are already right wing, having confused politics with personality, probably because she herself has no personality other than her politics. She can minimize, ignore, or even encourage the infliction of actual suffering when it happens to the wrong kind of people. She can write that “nothing that terrible has really happened” since the publication of Mark Fisher’s Exiting the Vampire Castle, even though Mark Fisher himself is mysteriously not around to appreciate that fact. She can do some shit with threatening to leak an unedited draft that I don’t even want to go into. She knows that the Nazis don’t come promising hatred but promising to be your friend, but it’s ok because she doesn’t really have any friends, just mufos. She’s doing great. She’s building a better, kinder world. She will never, ever be the Nazis.

Well, the British have ruined satire once again

An icon

Taika is about 79 years too late with his biting social satire

Destroy All Humans! - Remake Reveal Trailer. The remake will launch for PC, Playstation 4, and Xbox One in 2020.

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box art

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HOLY FUCK HOW DID THIS RACE OF CUCKS TAKE OVER HALF THE WORLD?

They took over half the world, realized what assholes they’d been in the process, and then went WAY hard on overcompensating for everything and anything they’d ever done badly.

A reminder that a friend of mine once described UK knife laws as allowing cops to arrest you for “intent to harm” if you say your carrying a knife over a certain length to defend yourself.

So what if the intent isn’t just theft? Rape and murder exists, I should just let them do this?

I should just let them take my identification? My card and cash and medical info which takes money and weeks to replace?

No, and I feel bad for the UK citizens who have no choice but to be a victim.

Yep according to them just let it happen. Just let them rape you, kill you, do what they want with you.

Same with Maryland.

I know this from personal experience with the police.

Screw that, carry a cane with you. Use it to whip the snot out of them. Pick up a rock, a mug, beer glass, use your keys in between your fingers like Wolverine, kick, claw, scream, tell them you got AIDS, fucking spit on them, just start hitting them in face. Just don’t sit/stand idly by while they rob/kill/rape you. Fight as if you are already dead. Keep fighting even when they say they have had enough.

Take them down permanently. They do not deserve your mercy.

That last sentence is an absolute garbage mindset.

“Plan to give in and not fight“ fuck no but thanks for playing.

The Modern English are not human