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After some followups and corrections involving J.K. Rowling’s new book and Jesse’s heaving knockers, Jesse tells Katie about a New York Times article which attempts to partially pin the blame for the travails experienced by the Women’s March — a super competent, super well-run organization that has never generated any controversies — on *RUSSIAN TROLLS*. Then the hosts take listeners’ advice for the very first time. Few lessons are learned, other than that Jesse is extremely dumb.
Links:
How Russian Trolls Helped Keep the Women’s March Out of Lock Step
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/18/us/womens-march-russia-trump.html
Jesse’s article on Louis Farrakhan and the Women’s March
CNN article also addressing this topic
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/28/politics/louis-farrakhan-speech/index.html
Woman’s March co-chair Linda Sarsour discusses “waging jihad” against “white supremacists and Islamophobes reigning in the White House”
Jesse != smart
Image: Russian President Vladimir Putin gives a speech during a ceremony formally annexing four regions of Ukraine Russian troops occupy - Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, at the Kremlin in Moscow on September 30, 2022. (Photo by Grigory SYSOYEV / SPUTNIK / AFP) (Photo by GRIGORY SYSOYEV/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)
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Y’all, I’m saving this episode to listen to in the car later with the Zoomer for whom I’m currently legal guardian/surrogate auntie. She recently stopped using they/them pronouns and is back to being a regular gay, renounced cancel culture, and is sitting on my couch doing a deep dive into the Blocked and Reported back catalogue. She wrote her final paper for a college class last year about KiwiFarms and is a connoisseur of online bullshit and nuanced discourse. I think I’m gonna bring her with me to the Boston show. This is my peak proud pseudo-mom moment. Turns out I am one okay groomer, after all!
Congratulations groomer!
She should read the whole series, though, because the characters really grow over the course of it.
As the last problem submitter I really don't appreciate Katie mocking my problem and assuming it was a troll. I'm not the first member of my family to have a problem with an American wife (a great uncle even lost his job due to one) and divorces run through my family. A distant relative actually had 6 marriages and the problems this caused led him to leave the church! I had hoped you could engage sincerely with my recording and try to stop the cycle of pain in my family, but instead you chose to laugh #royallydissapointed
I think I saw a recent Broadway musical about your relative who has six wives. And your great uncle's story sounds ripe for a movie directed by Madonna!
Dale this isnt entertainment these are peoples lives! If I had it my way you'd lose your head for this kind of reckless talk.
The last two listener advice questions (Life after Cringe and British Guy with Dramatic Wife) were Blocked and Reported classics and absolutely made my afternoon.
With the caveat that I can't possibly be nearly as delightful as the advice segment on the pod, I'm going to quibble with part of the advice J&K gave the 25yo man asking for dating advice (who sounds like a great guy all around). Katie says, and Jesse agrees, that you probably won't find the person you'll end up with at age 25 and that it's an age for having fun. This is a common belief among educated people—I used to hear people say it all the time when I was in my 20s—so I think it's at least worth noting that people who enter marriage in the 25–29 age bracket have the LOWEST divorce rates. Divorce rates are very high among people who marry in their teens, which probably gave rise to the generally sound "Wait till you're older" advice most of us got, but they also rise slightly among people who marry after 30, regardless of religious status. (See Figure 5 here: https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-religious-marriage-paradox-younger-marriage-less-divorce. The researchers are personally moderately conservative, but their data and analysis are generally well respected.)
My take on this question is that you shouldn't rush into marriage in your 20s if you haven't found the right person, but if you have found a good potential spouse, you shouldn't let your age scare you away from marriage. The data suggest you aren't at elevated risk of divorce in your mid- to late 20s.
—I loved J&K's advice that you don't have to share all your interests in common with your partner and that you should just talk about what you want to do with your dating relationship. Good stuff.
I completely agree with this!
I think if you are a person who wants a family your twenties are when you should be taking this seriously.
I also really felt for the young woman who wanted to clarify the relationship she was in. i disagree with Katie- I think she is really into this guy, and is afraid to press for more.
I think women worry that it's pushy or retro or embarrassing to want to get married and have kids. There is nothing wrong with that! Most women don't realize that their fertility declines after age 30.
Yup, I know this is a sensitive topic for women who don't find a spouse when they want to, so I usually don't bring it up IRL. But I'm also at the age (pushing 40) when many of my female friends who still want children are dealing with infertility or miscarriages, and I resent professional environments where we pretend that risks aren't higher for women in their late 30s and tell women to wait for years to even think about marriage and kids. It's great when that plan works out for individual women, but why are we hiding the stats from people who are young enough to weigh the costs and benefits before making their choices? And yes, for straight couples, it's important that men should be educated, too.
I think good men need to be careful about wasting a young woman’s time.
I was madly in love with a man I dated from ages 24-29. He really did string me along. Of course I am responsible for myself, but I don’t think what he did was honorable.
There used to be a lot of noise around this in the press when I was in my 20s, but it drove me insane at the time because it was always framed as “women putting off having babies” like we were a bunch of feckless dummies, with no broader context over the fact that both men and women were choosing not to rush into marriage and children. I’d be the first to say people should plan ahead and be aware of their fertility chances, but from where I’m sitting it was not cool for men to want to settle down, so women stopped trying to force them to. Now here we are, and it’s going to take effort on both sides to change anything.
I totally agree!
I started having kids in my thirties because the man I loved for most of my twenties had no interest in marrying me.
I had to end things with him and start over.
I wonder if all the women I know struggling with IVF and miscarriages in their late 30s and 40s will be telling their daughters (and sons) to get on with having a family, in the way we were told to get on with having a career. I know I will be telling mine to at least consider it. I am now too old but if I'd started younger, I would have had another kid. I think we talk a lot about women and having children as if a woman exists in a vacuum and then the child is a adjunct to that. We don't talk much about what kind of family you want to have, how two kids is different to three, how while it might be possible to have a newborn at 45, you are gonna be exhausted, especially if you already have younger ones.
100%.
I also think she knows his answer will be to choose the status quo. But maybe not! She needs to tell him what she wants, ie to be in a committed relationship.
I hope she is prepared to move on if he’s in a different frame of mind. Otherwise it’s all too likely that they’ll drift along until he simultaneously breaks it off and announces his engagement to someone he just met
I’m always late, but I have never agreed with anything more. You’re a genius ;)
Wow, if people are assuming they can’t meet a real partner at 25 they’re not giving themselves much time to suss people out. I met my husband on his 25th birthday, and though we waited 7 years to get married we worked out fairly quickly that we were heading in that direction. (For both of us, marriage was the prerequisite for children.) If we’d just assumed 25 was too young to meet each other. I wonder if we’d have spin off looking for someone “more important” later?
Generations of people convinced that it's hip and reasonable to be chasing toddlers after 40 and going to high school graduations 6 years from retirement. Parenting is a younger person's game. It takes a lot of energy to do it well. It's also cool to be able to enjoy your life more with older children, grandkids, and all of the other ancient human joys we forgot in our clumsy sprint to the modern world.
I don’t think for many it’s what they wanted- it’s just the way it turned out.
I would have loved to have my babies in my twenties but didn’t get married until I was thirty. That’s what’s so sad about this for me- that if you want marriage and babies you can’t make it happen by yourself/ it takes another person and that means the timing often isn’t up to you
It’s not all bad for sure though. My parents had me at 37 and 40 in the 1970’s long before it was cool. A lot of my friends’ parents were getting divorced and being generally young, stupid, and chaotic while my parents were nice, safe, boring old stick-in-the muds who were always waiting for me on the porch right where I left them. They already owned a home, had stable jobs, and had been together long enough to have a solid “before kids”. I didn’t appreciate those advantages when I was younger because they WERE tired a lot and could not have been less interested in cartoons and “kid’s stuff”. On balance though I think their advanced ages ;) brought way more good than bad.
At first, I agreed with them that 25 is too young to be too serious about dating. But then I remembered my best friend met her husband at 25. And I started dating my husband at 26. And my other married friend also got with her husband around the same time. And my parents met in their mid- to late twenties. So, 25 is probably when you want to start thinking about meeting your spouse, based on all my experiences.
Plus, if you're straight and want to have bio kids, that fertility graph gets depressing between ages 30 and 31.
Thats certainly part of it, I’d imagine but the element thats so rarely discussed with marriage is fear of being alone. I’d bet people who went so long alone, aren’t as afraid of returning to single life or the potential loneliness and the couples who stay together might not be staying married exclusively out of wedded bliss.
When I saw Jesse's Prince Harry tweet, it took me a few seconds to put it together. Then I figured it was a clever, Jesse-style spin on current events. The replies were equally cryptic and clever, I thought. Most people seemed to get the joke. Now you're telling me that not even Jesse got it? Feigning ignorance is a BARpod tradition, so I suspect we're all being played here and I'm going to be embarrassed for even mentioning it.
I will admit that I didn't get it either until Katie pointed it out. D'oh!
Me neither.
same, I realized it was a joke, because it was completely non-specific and there wasn't anything to give advice about, but I didn't put the royal family together until Katie said it
Hi, I live near the neighborhood where the shop teacher works. My brother-in-law just told me a story about spotting this teacher's rack while driving a couple years ago, so unless this person has been at this anti-woke ruse for 2 years, or there is a second absurdly-chested person in Oakville, I'm not sure that Redditer's story can be trusted.
Nothing originating on 4chan should be trusted, it's a troll factory
So... the Portland Women's March had a really fun 2017 as well. After a group of equally young and socially connected trans women & women of color took over the march from existing leadership, one of them literally tried to flee to Canada with the money (https://www.koin.com/news/crime/woman-admits-taking-10k-from-portland-womens-march/) Brewis took the fall and all the public blame but I was there and can tell you - it was a bunch of children horribly botching things from end to end.
Conveniently, no one remembers that. They remember a mean white woman (who is trans but don't mention that) stealing money from brown women. Not a group of rich, socially connected young activists forcibly taking over an event to grow their own "brands", alienating anyone who couldn't get with their particular race politics, and then botching the whole thing royally. Brewis, by the way, fled to Canada as a political refugee because Trump had just taken office and she would surely be in the first round of coming death camps. Canada declined.
Interesting that anti-Semitic black nationalism came up in the podcast in the context of the Women's March drama.
An anti-Semitic black nationalist has a trial due to start this Monday, Oct 3. I say he's a black nationalist because he has a social media history where he's praising and reposting Black Hebrew Israelite nonsense, including praise for Hitler. This is a copy/paste of my post in this week's open thread:
---
YouTube recommendations have clued me in that the trial of Darrel Brooks kicks off next Monday. This is the man accused of committing the Waukesha Parade Massacre.
He's been trying to represent himself and has appeared before the judge a few times. Today his motion was finally granted.
It turns out that Brooks is not merely horrible enough to run over 77 innocent people at a Christmas Parade, he is also a sovereign citizen. He and the judge have exhausting exchanges where he insists he's representing himself "pro pert" which to him means he's representing himself as a sovereign citizen, and the judge tells him that his status as a sovereign citizen isn't something she's going to rule on, she just needs to know if he's representing himself or not.
One of the videos is ten minutes of the judge explaining to Brooks that if he's going to represent himself then he's not entitled to have a public defender to advise him.
He also modified the forms that exist to be sure he understands the stupidity of his decision, crossing out the words "I understand" and replacing them with "I have been informed of." At first I thought this was a play at pretending like he's a dummy and later appealing on grounds of incompetent counsel, but a YouTube commenter clued me in that it's another sovereign citizen thing. Sovereign citizens think that to say "I understand" means that they acknowledge they "stand under" the authority of the court and have given up their sovereignty.
Here's a few of the videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZVJxA8gnNE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykLGNeY-X9Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYPz2_BHsyY
I guess I'll end up glued to yet another trial in Wisconsin this fall.
Man. Talk about facism. I just assumed a sovereign citizen us a white dude
I remember Black Hebrews used to have a platform at Times Square. This was the mid 90s. Late 90s. They would go on these rants about white Jews being fake Jews. My brother and I were terrified.
Are you developing a podcast? Starting a blog? I'd subscribe.
Oh, it’s *him*. Saw this in the open thread and didn’t make the connection.
Wonder if his sovereign citizen status will help him when, if his defence fails, he’s banged up in maximum security.
Tim Dillon has a great rant about Russian troll farms taking long lunches and breaks then coming In late and leaving early every day because they barely have to do anything to get Americans at each other’s throats.
I really enjoyed the advice section, and not only because it didn’t involve prosthetics, pronouns or phalloplasty. Definitely do this again please.
I respectfully disagree. Listening to relationship advice is boring.
Yep, I love B&R but if I wanted to hear people obsessing about relationships, I'd be out, not in, listening to a podcast.
The lolcow dilemma was sort of interesting (if true). The rest, meh.
The lolcow dilemma definitely needs to be made into a romcom.
Definitely in that vein
Just started the episode and I’m already looking forward to snuggling up into the pod’s BRAS.
I agree, and I thought the advice was very reasonable!
I don't want to be a jerk but this advice column is pretty unlistenable. These are boring questions and the advice is like "get on dating apps?". Cool thanks. Nobody's love life is interesting to anyone but themselves. Cut it please
Jesse’s cluelessness about the Harry/Meghan parody was hilariously cringe but also why I’d never send anyone to Barpod for advice. However, Ben Dreyfus has a feature on his substack: “People Sent Questions To Advice Columnists And I Am Answering Them”. Highly recommended
Personally I'm just impressed they came up with a segment more boring than the dating thing they did a while back.
Have to agree. It was fine as a one-off segment, but I'd have no interest in hearing it regularly. The questions themselves were rambling and a bit boring. Maybe if there was some really interesting twist I could tolerate this occasionally, but definitely not in the current form
How can Jesse be so wrong a lot something that matters? Mr. Garrison was trying to get fired so he could sue. Katie, as usual, was correct.
The most bizarre person involved with the Women's March was probably Rasmea Odeh, a terrorist who bombed a grocery store, killed two people, served prison time, and illegally immigrated to the US: https://nypost.com/2017/02/25/the-next-womens-march-is-co-organized-by-a-terrorist/
The internet might have rotted my brain, but Linda's reference to Jihad is hilarious in retrospect.
As someone who is a Lolcow (very likely) I would say honesty is better. If someone came up to me and said they have laughed at me and mocked me online but now they see how dehumanizing and demoralizing that actually is -- I would have a forgiving heart. And so would this person. Lolcows are often people who are too sincere and empathetic and thus, can't play the online game of being a disconnected dick.
I appreciate this!
At a certain point I stopped seeing her as cringe and started seeing the people posting about her as cringe. Every cringe finger I point in her direction is 4 cringe fingers pointed back at myself.
Yeah I totally get it.
I didn't know you listened to this podcast! Figures.
That last call made me realize that I'm just an older version of Harry: English ✓, In California ✓, American Wife that's a bit of a diva that my dad hated and caused a rift ✓, got back together with my English family and all sorts of problems ensue ✓. Which means that in about a decade or so, Meghan will dump Harry for a younger bloke, 'cause that's what happened to me!
Haaaaa. Actually snorted. I....do not get his appeal
This makes sense if someone heard about it Abd then fucked him. Otherwise you have to agree to kiss a guy who seems....ew.
Still. Everyone has their own taste
Okay, I wonder if I'm right about something with the first guy or if I'm totally off base. Circus guy, have you exhausted the dating potential in your (probably small) group of hardcore circus art friends? It sounded to me like you're potentially looking for someone who is a normie (or not already in to circus stuff and would try it out) but is down to come and cheer you on about circus stuff? And also doesn't mind that you don't have a ton of time to invest in a relationship? Did someone *call* you an asshole and that's why you brought it up?
It sounds like you wouldn't be a good fit for most people with a regular 9-5. Most people with extracurricular time and a significant other want to spend that time together, of course. It's probably not impossible to find other people to date who are really busy--but then they probably won't have too much time to come cheerlead you in your circus stuff. And if they DO carve time out of their super busy schedule to come to your weird hobby (at your request), you should also be carving time out of your super busy schedule to come to THEIR crossfit cult competitions or whatever. And (I'm not assuming anything, this could totally not be the case!) if, in a prior relationship, you wanted to spend your very limited extra time at your circus thing with your SO sitting on a bench and watching you, but you never went to her community theater production of Bat Boy the Musical . . . I wouldn't say she's totally wrong for calling you an asshole. Just IF that's the case, which I totally get it might not be.
And for the lolcow caller, not exactly the same, but I did make friends with someone who I had followed online and felt like a minor celebrity to me. (Similarly to you, I didn't seek out a friendship with her, we had mutuals who connected us because they thought we would be good friends. She knew I had read a few of her articles, so maybe tell your lolcow that you've seen a few of her youtube videos or something.) I didn't tell her until we had been friends for a while, and then I sort of slowly told her about it in an "isn't this funny, I used to be so nervous to talk to you" kind of way. Now we laugh about it. The truth is, who people are online is almost always different from who they are in person. I told her once I could say "now that I know you in person, I don't even think about your internet persona anymore" and it would be the truth, and also once she knew me well enough that she would know it was the truth. At first, it was really weird for me, but I think if I had told her it would have been weirder for her. I know it's not exactly the same as your situation, but I'm with Katie--if you really want to be friends with her, don't tell her until you know how she'll take it. If you get to know her and it seems like she would feel it's a betrayal that you didn't tell her or she'll laugh it off, tell her. If you get to know her and she's the type to generally turn a blind eye if it makes her happier, keep it to yourself.
If we’re going by the hypothesis that soy consumption causes breast growth, as a tofu-loving vegetarian/member of the itty bitty titty committee, I’d love to know just how much flatter I’d be if I didn’t eat soy.
I have consumed a lot of tofu and other soy products in the past 15 years. Sadly this has not increased my bust size at all, but that could be because I'm postmenopausal (or because soy really doesn't help).
Is there a sudden lack of crazy bullshit on the internet to warrant filler segments like an advice column?
It’s a bit of light relief after a few extremely heavy weeks. Worth it for the Prince Harry troll job.
Yeah I wrote that before the last call. Definitely made it worthwhile
I'm lonely at 31 and would be glad to be friends with the people I stalk online. I tend to have personal lolcows whose emotional states I understand and find relatable, yet I am also repulsed and entertained by their excesses. Maybe Life After Cringe should become my friend and share the milk.
You'll hear people say it's hard to make friends in your 30s, but IMO it's not true. Go to bars even if you don't drink. Eventually you'll meet people and make friends. There are a lot of lonely people out there who want friends--go find them!
Law School Girl - if you want to continue to hookup with this guy, do not - do NOT! - sound out the subject by asking him if he wants to pretend to be your fake brother. Also, if you’re still talking nearly every day, there’s a good chance that he’s more than open to continuing a more-than-friends relationship & just waiting for you to broach the subject. After all, it was your situation that changed; not unreasonable for him to be thinking that it’s your ball. Use your words & good luck :)
Use your words, Future Lawyer, but I'm going to disagree with this assessment. She told him the situation had changed, and he did not pick up the ball. IME when a relationship falls into the "agreed to be not serious" department for a changeable variable, it's because one or both don't see it ever becoming serious.
Agree
l admittedly haven't read JK Rawling's last two books (I did read Cuckoo's Calling), but from Katie's description of them (both in this episode and when she discussed Ink Black Heart), I think its possible she might be too easily dismissing reasonable readings of the books.
Saying that Troubled Blood isn't about transgender people because the killer in Troubled Blood was just a man who dress up like a woman to get away with crimes, and Ink Black Heart isn't about Rawling b/c the person was cancelled for something other than transphobia does kind of smack of claiming Animal Farm is just a kids book about some anthropomorphized animals.
Maybe there really isn't any there there, as I said I haven't read them, but Katie's summaries haven't really convinced me that is the case.
Both of these are tiny, minor plot points in huge books that are about something else. Not even plot points, more like throwaway lines.
And it is not necessarily true that the killer in TB was the guy who wore women's clothes a couple of times - the character is a convicted serial killer who is a suspect in the cold case the detectives solve.
ETA that the serial killer character was partly based on the real life murdererJerry Brudos,.
I've read them all, and Troubled Blood is in no way at all about Transgender people.
The Highland Park shooter donned something to make himself look like a woman to flee the scene. We heard so many times about men in Afghanistan putting on hijabs to look like women in order to carry out bombing at checkpoints. It has nothing do do with sex roles or trans or anything but a disguise.
There is nothing at all in Ink Black Heart about trans. I have no idea where anyone could have gotten any of that.
Read the books, and then have an opinion.
You are rather proving the point that of you haven’t read the book, you are on thin ice reading anything into it.
There’s an important difference between a reader’s response and the author’s intent.
Orwell was very clear in letters and essays about the message he intended to convey in Animal Farm (see the Wikipedia entry for the book) and his intent and meaning were also clear to his prospective publishers
“Conceived and written sometime between November 1943 and February 1944, just prior to his writing of The English People, which was finished in May 1944, Animal Farm was not published until August 1945. It was late because at first Orwell could not find a publisher.Gollancz refused it because the story was bitterly anti-Soviet and badly timed. Jonathan Cape refused it for the same reason. An official from the Ministry of Information briefed him against it.Faber also refused.”
Absent statement from JKR *herself* that she intended to convey a message about gender politics, it’s fair to take her at her word, that she was using a common mode of disguise used in crime fiction. (Fwiw just off the top of my head, I can think of two instances in John F MacDonald’s Travis McGee series where the villain wears a woman’s disguise. )
Edited to add source of my quote about Animal Farm:
— George Orwell: English Rebel by Robert Colls
https://a.co/97CuyHB
I am a little confused. I thought Orwell's intent in Animal Farm was obvious.
*Rowling
I’ve not read them either, they are way too long for me to even think about. My comment would be that, particularly in the latest one, if the two uses of the T word are unrelated to the plot then they are there for some other reason like creating controversy for the sake of it. No problem with an author doing this but to complain when it has the expected reaction would be silly.
You are wrong. Read the book.
Shout out to Circus Arts guy! There’s a variety of things that can cover as a hobby, including juggling (my hobby), aerial, acrobatics, contortion, Diablo, tight wire and slack line walking, Poi, playing with fire in various ways, yo-yo tricks, unicycling….
What they have in common is that they take a shit-load of your time. Especially if you want to get beyond beginner level. They also tend to be quite male-dominated. (Like a lot of hobbies that involve a lot of intense time obsessively practising something!)
It is of course possible to find women in the circus arts community to date, but you are way more likely to meet a woman who finds your hobby intriguing and is willing to go along to conventions and maybe pick up some juggling balls and try to join in than you are to find a woman who *is spending just as much time on her hobby as you are* and is willing to to fit you into her already very busy schedule.
So yes, hit the apps, and also be prepared to invest some time in the women you meet before you try and persuade her to go full circus arts with you.
As if on cue, this profile video of a woman in the circus arts came across my feeds this morning: https://youtu.be/d794KAoG_0Y
What if Katie didn’t get the British Royal family thingy either. The whole community certainly dodged a bullet there, would’ve been embarrassing. Let us hope the Russians don’t target BAR.
Katie or Катя, as she is known among Putin’s agents’ network.
Great troll with Prince Harry -- only thing missing was the posh accent.
For clarity
Bollocks= British
Bollix = Irish
In this case, the longer final vowel of the British version is better. You can’t roar Bollix. Too tinny. Hi
You guys are the proverbial angel and devil on my shoulder with my lolcow dilemma.
Wasn’t nuts about the Russian interference take. Why can’t it be two things, ie something that can be annoyingly harped on or catastrophised by left-liberals AND something that happened? The NYT quote they read out is actually pretty accurate. Interference - or more accurately, the *effect* of interference operations like that run by Russia's Internet Research Agency troll farm - is a really difficult thing to prove, but the fact that it may not have been as huge as some have claimed is not the same thing as saying it had no effect at all. I think our heroes got out over their skis a little on this one.
I CANNOT BELIEVE Jesse didn’t catch the Royals reference! I saw the tweet but I assumed it was a self-aware joke! 🤣🤣🤣
am I the only one who thinks the lolcow person should apologize? Or at least own it? You want to be a friend but laughed for years?
They’re probably never actually going to be your friend in that case, but yeah; it may be that a friendship just isn’t possible in these circumstances. (I feel very virtuous, or maybe just lucky, rn for not really having any lolcows.)
I definitely plan on it. I also think that she would find the whole thing pretty fascinating. The cringe appeal for me is based in how much I identify with her, really.
Today I watched Contrapoints's video "Cringe" and drew some clarity from it.
She refers to " The A-Log Theory of Morbid Cringe”– that we form obsessive contempt for “people who make us uncomfortable because we see something of ourselves in them.”
A-Log theory is kind of Jung's shadow play, no?
anyway, I didn't love Katie and Jesse's advice (don't tell?!) because I heard you say friend. and that to me is someone who is supportive and direct.
Btw Katie, Ben Dreyfuss stole your improved-advice advice column idea for his Substack relaunch
The 23 year old lass - The Abby and Ben Shapiro thing gives me a clue that her and her boyfriend possibly look very similar. In fact I've always suspected Abby and Ben were actually the same person; have they ever been seen together in the same room?
Disappointed to hear J&K falling into the boring thought-terminating cliche of “criticism of Israel isn’t antisemitism.” Especially when the segment wasn’t about Israel until they decided to bring it up. I don’t know why every discussion of antisemitism needs to come coupled with accusations that (((certain people))) are weaponizing it against their enemies.
I haaaate this. Criticism of Israel is not inherently anti Semitism. Neither is anti Zionism. But you sure as hell can hide anti semitism behind criticism, especially on the left since anti semitism is not ok but anti Zionism is.
In this case. To be fair. The NYT article was about Linda Sarsour. Who is hardcore anti Zionist and gets accused of anti Semitism and says it is only because she criticizes Israel. Oh. She was invited to a panel to speak about anti semitism. She is HUGE in anti-Zionist Jewish groups.
Thank you. I was kind of happy that Jesse finally had the courage to address a tiny bit the issue of anti-semitism. But then, dear Katie, you had to add the caveat, "Of course, you can be anti-Israel and not anti-semitic." Look, I can't stand Benjamin Netanuyahu and hope his coalition is not re-elected. I oppose much of the occupation.
But I am pro-Israel because I believe in Israel's right to existence is established. I believe describing Israel as a colonial state is woke language. I believe that calling Israel an apartheid state is a misuse of the term. I believe that using the term genocide to describe Israel's actions is clearly a misuse of the term, and I believe comparing the Nakba to the Holocaust is an intentional misreading of history. I could go on, but you probably get my drift.
You all have dipped your toe in the water. Maybe you should have your friend Bari Weiss on (or read her book).
Also, Jesse, talk to your parents (I'm THAT generation) and see what they say.
Likewise re entirety, including generation. Thanks!!
I honestly do not want them addressing this. I want them to stay away from it .
And I feel the same way. I do not even understand the whole settler colonial thing. The Ottoman Empire was...not colonial?
On second thought, fear that you’re entirely correct.
I remember a Russian troll account (right wing) banned by Twitter a few years back. It was called Ten_GOP(as in Tennessee). I discovered it through Glenn Reynolds(Instapundit) who retweeted it all the time. It sounded pitch perfect. The thing that didn't occur to me until after it was banned was that someone might call themselves TN_GOP or Tenn_GOP but not Ten_GOP.
The shop teacher 100% feels like a troll to me. And thanks for getting into the NYT russian bot piece. Maddening.
Oh, Jesse
Invading Ukraine was bad enough, but now Russia has gone too far!!!!
During housekeeping, Jesse keeps telling us they’re on Tor, but doesn’t explain how to find them. Not everyone is that tuned into the net that they know how to use tor.
🤣😂🤣👍👍
You guys missed the point on the Russian troll farms. It's true that the Women's March movement was deeply fractured. It's also true that Russian trolls attempted to make those divisions worse. Whiles it's good to point out that Russian trolling isn't some all powerful bugaboo monster, the reality is that the Russian government is trying to throw sand on the gearing of democracy. It doesn't excuse activist movements from being able to organize; rather, it's a warning that we should be looking at these attempts to 'hack' democracy seriously no matter how feeble they are now. Twitter trolls are the 1st generation iteration of this strategy. TikTok could be the second generation. The fact that these attacks might not have been as successful as some might portray them doesn't mean we should the downplay the existing threat.
This was a great episode! It was funny, informative, and a nice reminder of why I started listening. (Although I would recommend making the advice column only an occassional feature.)
Should have been “this increasingly ill-advised podcast.” 😅
Shortly after Rush Limbaugh died, someone called in to the Savage Lovecast, who many people speculated was his gay kid. Part of me feels like that is being referenced here.
My premium feed is not receiving the premium episodes on my podcast app.
Recently had the same problem with the Fifth Column (also substack) so I removed the old feed and set it up again. Fingers crossed.
It just showed up now for me.
Rub it in Pongo.
Please please please no more advice segments. Or add it as a new minipod. Earspace is limited and I subscribe in order to listen to Jesse and Katie. You guys filter out the drivel, and on this episode I was blindsided with it.
Finally finished the episode. Pod = audible and uber-respectable equivalent of Kiwi Farms, love it!!
what's she saying? shop class??
Crime fiction aka RA literature
RA Lit?
Who else is going to the Boston show?
And they went so far to Typo the email. Oh the humanity.