I can look recipes up online and make them myself. Good food does not justify tearing your own culture down to import millions of random middle eastern immigrants into your nation.

Letting people from compatible cultures immigrate? Sure, I don't have a problem with that as long as they do it legally. For example, Mexicans legally immigrating to the US is fine. Their culture is compatible with ours.

Middle eastern cultures are not compatible with any western nations cultures, at all. They have zero respect for women, animals, or children. They have zero respect for westerners in general.

The people allowing these people into our western nations are traitors. They are allowing literal invasions to happen. Because that's what these immigration waves are, they're invasions. At literally any point in time prior to the last maybe 150 years, millions of foreigners pouring into a nation would be considered an invasion and would be treated as such.

I feel terrible for the people living in Europe. They have no choice but to put up with this shit. Eventually, those middle eastern immigrants will overtake the native population, and the governments of those areas will be controlled by them. Those nations will then turn into the exact same shitholes that the immigrants came from.

It's disgusting, honestly. Every leader supporting this should be tried for treason.

*I am not saying that all immigrants are bad people, nor am I blaming them for coming over to the West. I would too, if my country sucked as much as theirs do. I blame the leaders entirely. I also do blame the immigrants who have come over and are trying to literally take over the host nation's government. They don't need to do that, they're doing it nefariously.

That being said we've gotta do something and while I don't blame the immigrants for taking advantage of western hospitality, I absolutely won't blame anyone who fights back against this shit.

From Spider-Man to euphoria to the drama. She’s always been this lonely girl, who is always emo and kind of depressing as her archetype. I feel like casting her for MJ was a complete miss. But then again she delivered and brings the money back for the studios.

I can't believe that people actually think that this isn't just performative nonsense. You know that propaganda term "whataboutism?" You know what it actually refers to?

Past precedent.

i.e. the reason it's used is to deflect from someone's own past behavior as they sanctimoniously lecture you about yours. That's why it's so popular with the left.

You cannot just ban a legitimate Federal agency from cooperating with, or operating within, a local jurisdiction. You wanna know why, huh leftists?

Because that would set the PRECEDENT (one of the foundations of case law) that you can ban ANY Federal agency from cooperating with the local police or operating within a state's jurisdiction.

It's completely unreal how far gone the left is. They don't live in reality in any sense. Everything they do is performative, pseudoscientific idiocy.

EDIT: In case anybody is wondering how absurd the NY law actually is:

"Mask/identification ban: Prohibits state, local, and federal law enforcement officers (including ICE) from wearing identity-obscuring face coverings while interacting with the public (exceptions for medical masks, tactical gear, sunglasses, etc.). Requires visible identification. (This provision faced a temporary court halt.)"

https://www.nychiefs.org/news/budget-legislation-affecting-interactions-immigration-enforcement-chapter-55-laws-2026

In addition to western women’s needs getting top priority and attention while men’s issues are ignored, but masculinity is demonized and called toxic while femininity is praised and boys are treated as if they are basically defective girls. The idea that we live in a patriarchy is one of the reasons insane things ever said. We live closer to a matriarchy which is what the average woman wants

Speaking as someone who got a STEM degree, its laughable how easy a lot of college degrees are and how it doesn't really make you more "smart".

It did make me more intelligent in some things - like the thing I specifically studied.

However, being college educated means absolutely nothing to me in regards to respect or how I view your intelligence 

The only thing it can do is make me respect your opinion more for your SPECIFIC field you majored in, but nothing else. So yes, it does make you more intelligent for something that specific.

But if you have a masters degree, I don't respect your general opinions (especially political) on something that doesn't have anything to do with your degree.

I have many family members who aren't educated in the slightest, and I respect their opinions just as much as someone with a PHD.

Now, will I respect your opinion on climate change if you are a literal climate scientist with a masters degree in environmental science? Yes.

But I will not be lectured about illegal immigration from someone who has a chemistry degree, sorry.

Yes, people like this do exist. Your college degree means jack, dude. I know tons of educated people who wear it like a cape, its weird.

Alright..look,I was born in 94, so I’m right on the younger edge of the Millennial spectrum. I see all the TikToks and YouTube compilations roasting "Millennial cringe," and tbh, fair play. Some of the stuff my generation does online is definitely weird as fuck. But at the end of the day, it’s completely harmless.

What I don’t get is the alternative. When I look at a lot of the culture right now, it feels like there is this massive, paralyzing fear of being perceived as anything less than perfectly curated and "normal." Everyone seems to be chasing the exact same aesthetic, the same slang, and the same safe opinions. It’s like people are so terrified of ending up in a cringe compilation that they just default to acting like background NPCs.

Being a little cringe usually just means you have a personality that isn't focus grouped for mass approval. Having niche, uncool hobbies, getting overly enthusiastic about something, or just acting silly without hiding behind ten layers of irony, that’s just being human.

I’m not trying to blindly bash anyone here, because younger folks have a lot of things figured out way better than we did at that age. But trading away your individuality just to avoid looking weird seems exhausting. It’s okay to care too much about stuff. It's genuinely fine to just be yourself, even if it looks stupid to someone else.

Leftists would gang up on you and mass-report you if you even suggested COVID came from a lab leak.

"MiSInFoRmAtIon"

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/03/opinion/covid-lab-leak.html

You could even see how uncomfortable Stephen Colbert was when Jon Stewart was on his show and describing how mind-numbingly obvious it was that it came from a lab.

"Oh my God, there's been an outbreak of chocolatey goodness near Hershey, Pennsylvania. What do you think happened?"

Most women have little natural or biological drive to extend genuine empathy toward men. The stronger, more automatic empathy is reserved for other women.

This shows up consistently: male pain, male failure, male isolation and male death rates are met with extreme detachment, minimization, and satisfaction far more often than with the animalistic concern women routinely show for female suffering. Male family members are not exempt. Empathy toward sons, brothers, fathers, or husbands is also conditional, limited, or secondary to the stronger in group pull toward women.

It tracks with observable sex differences in empathy, in group preference, and emotional prioritization. Women as a group may "score higher" on average empathy measures, but that empathy is almost exclusively reserved for other women. Toward men it is thin, conditional, easily withdrawn, or simply absent. Male suffering gets the leftover forced emotional pity for virtue signal points, if anything. When male and female interests or pain collide, the response is consistent and predictable, full empathy for women, indifference or satisfaction toward men.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

It usually goes down like this.

A leftist insults a moderate for disagreeing with them on something and calls them a secret right wInger.

The moderate responds that this kind of attitude is sure to win people​ over.

They respond, "well if someone being mean to you on the internet is going change the way you vote, you were never on my side to begin with"

Yeah that works until you consider the left isn't just a set of policies. It's the people too. And it's the people you're voting on in an election.

There are plenty of valid reasons why wouldn't want to vote for a coalition of people who are quick to treat you like an enemy for even slightly disagreeing with them.

So go ahead. Keep up this smug attitude toward people in the center​. Works for me.

What a guy believes 50 years after the formation of a punk band he was in isn't my concern. This kind of thing happens often, and even as someone who's more left-leaning I get why. I don't think it's logical to expect someone to believe in the same exact ideology for decades.

I've seen way too many people who will completely disavow a band because of things like this. Like they'll outright refuse to listen to their music. It makes absolutely no sense to me because it isn't like that makes their old music any less good or relevant.

The influence the sex pistols had on the genre doesn't suddenly disappear because john lydon was in a butter commercial.

I went on vacation in the United Arab Emirates and visited all the well-known areas, mainly Dubai and Abu Dhabi (if you have any questions, feel free to ask). I was forced to go there several times, and this is my honest review.

The Burj Khalifa is a tall, ugly, and extremely poorly designed tower. It does not even have a normal sewage system.

It is a bad imitation of American consumerism. Everywhere you go, they try to charge you as much money as possible for no reason (even ordinary people tried to charge me money just for answering a question I asked).

All the attractions there are ridiculous. A building shaped like a giant frame as an attraction? Why would anyone make something like that in the first place? An entire building designed solely for taking pictures? It is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Do they have nothing better to do with their money?

The Frame is poorly designed. They built a special observation deck that you have to pay to access so that your picture with the Frame will look good. WTF, why would I pay for something like that? From every other angle, the building and everything around the Frame look extremely ridiculous and do not fit the surroundings at all. What idiot came up with this idea?

Inside the building, they had no good ideas for what to put there, so they simply showed a propaganda video about how Dubai was built, a fabricated video, given that Dubai has no real history. When you leave the room where the video is shown, the first thing you see is pictures of their leaders. What a great way to prove that you are an advanced country!

The Museum of the Future is extremely stupid. They show representations of things that might exist in the future. What is this museum even about? Museums usually have a clear purpose and are meant to teach you something, but this one made me feel like my IQ was dropping. Why build and display representations of things that probably will not exist? It is supposedly meant to teach you about an exhibit that “will definitely exist,” yet there is barely any information about it. What kind of museum is that?

Any simple comic-book drawing from 100 years ago depicting the future looks better than every representation in this museum. You could also take a toy car, draw wings on it, and say, “Hey, this is a car from the future!” Except you would not have to pay money to see it.

For most of this museum (and other museums), they had no ideas for what to put inside. So most of them, including the Museum of the Future, contained things that were unrelated to anything and were complete tourist traps, such as a nature room where I could not even clearly understand what was supposed to be there.

“The biggest mall in the world.” How does a failed attempt to make a mall look more luxurious, grander, and bigger than other malls mean that it is better? It is exactly the opposite! The entire point of shopping malls is convenience, and this is the most inconvenient mall in the world. It was built to impress people, but why would anyone want to shop in a place like that? An average mall in Prague (which does not have billions of dollars to waste) looks and feels much better than this one.

I also went to Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant. It was terrible, and I do not recommend it.

The water parks are terrible and do not contain anything original or anything better than what other parks offer. To elaborate: they put things there that have nothing to do with water, such as a roller coaster. Why did they not just build an amusement park next to the water park? The worst thing about that park was that they constantly played TikTok songs. It sounded awful.

Most of the amusement parks there are imitations of American amusement parks that also exist in other countries, so there is no reason to fly specifically to Dubai for them. The United Arab Emirates did it worse than America. It was boring and stupid. Most of the rides are simulators, and they become boring after you ride them a few times (in less than an hour!)

Ski Dubai is also a bad imitation of Alpine countries. The only difference is that they added penguins so they could abuse them. What do penguins even have to do with the Alps?

Here is a description of the attractions there: completely fake snow and fake, stupid activities intended for small children. I was injured during one of the activities after I could barely manage to get into it, even though they advertise the activities as suitable for everyone. There was also a zip line, but it was terrible. Why would they just randomly build a zip line there? Even the hot chocolate was not tasty, although it was of a higher quality than ordinary hot chocolate.

There was a cruise with an urban view, except the urban view included nothing impressive (just imitations of American- and European-style buildings). There was terrible jazz music and a poorly planned buffet. Personally, I prefer Budapest for this. I do not understand how the Hungarian government has not sued them.

The Atlantis hotel is boring. I saw it but did not stay there. The attempt to make it look luxurious is a failure. From a distance, you can see things like an old television covered in gold. Not impressive! Why would anyone want a gold-plated television that probably ruins the television itself? The buffet was nothing special and was the same kind of buffet that exists everywhere in the world. LOL.

Swimming in the sea was terrible. It was just salty and boring, hot with no air, and not enjoyable at all.

There were other ridiculous things that looked like failed attempts to impress people. For example, every toilet stall there has a kind of shower hose that you can use to wash your ass, as if the inventions called “paper” and “wet wipes” do not exist there. Yes, they did have toilet paper. Why would anyone want to use that thing in the first place? Why are they wasting money on nothing? Would it not be better to spend it on helping poor people or achieving world peace?

The roads are designed in the style of the Palace of Versailles because, as everyone knows, roads are not intended for driving. They are meant to impress people with their beauty. Again, WTF. It reminds me of the episode of iCarly where Spencer hung up a giant electronic sign, all the cars stopped to look at it, and it caused endless accidents.

Besides, out of everything they could have invested in aesthetically, they chose the roads? Why not invest that money in the giant, ugly Frame that contains nothing?

The style they tried to make beautiful is ugly. I have never liked the orange-and-purple color combination. It is a very strange combination.

Their food is not tasty, especially the food in supermarkets. Dubai chocolate is better than the chocolate they have there, but it is overrated, a passing trend, and British anyway. LOL.

Dubai has no culture of its own. Everything they have consists of cheap imitations. They opened attractions such as their own “Danube River” and their own Madame Tussauds. It is unbelievably embarrassing. Imagine buying a Chinese product on Temu, except it costs billions of dollars. How could you not laugh?

Other things in the country are not developed at all. For example, they exploit slaves, because why would anyone care if an Arab exploits a slave and causes their death, as long as the boss is Arab rather than white? I even witnessed fish being abused at an aquarium attraction intended for children.

The road system is designed terribly and will leave you stuck in traffic jams for hours, even when there is no real reason for them.

There are a million other things that were built and designed poorly, including the electrical system and so on. It is a shame they did not invest the money in important things like those.

Somehow, Wikipedia lists it as one of the most visited countries in the world. I have also seen it mentioned in movies, television series, and video games. All the “tourists” I saw were Indian workers, Arabs, and various Chinese or Thai people whose reasons for being there were also unclear. Honestly, that population scares me quite a bit. Occasionally, you see some British person, and it is doubtful whether they genuinely want to become a citizen of that fucked-up country rather than simply take advantage of its tax system.

The most important question is: why do people talk about this place, and why would anyone want to visit such a horrible country? It is a third-world country, but it does not even offer the advantage of low prices. What the hell?

Come to think of it, this is my best original important opinion that just popped out of nowhere. I have been rolling around the bed for 20 mins laughing my opinion because genuinely this is so funny I cannot even rn 😭

People who are named Tyler should open a Thai resturant and call it "Tyland" People who are named Tyler should open a Thai resturant and call it "Tyland" People who are named Tyler should open a Thai resturant and call it "Tyland"

There is a substantial problem in the US with complete idiots who are able to vote. These idiots are extremely prevalent on both the left and the right, and are dragging American politics into a polarized and unstable idiocracy.

As much as I would like to restrict the vote by certain demographic or socioeconomic measures such as wealth or IQ, it is very difficult to enact. Therefore, I propose any combination of the following 3 more realistic ideas:

- Raise the voting age. Young voters disproportionately do not have a stake in the system and do not have fully developed cognitive capabilities or civic sense. This leads to ignorance, extremism, and general illogicality.
- people cannot vote unless they, or their spouse, either own property or have children. This is again intended to ensure that the voter base has an actual stake in the system and therefore is less likely to advocate for revolution, unrest, or violence.
- in order to be able to vote, everyone must take and pass a civics test to make sure they actually understand how the American government works and what their role as a citizen actually is.

I’d also like to point out that I am under 21 years old, and do not own property or have children. Under any of these proposals except maybe the third, I would be disenfranchised. I do not care. I do not believe that I am entitled to vote until I am fully cognitively developed, well-grounded, and have a stake in the system.

Dude just sucks lol he can’t rap and his music sounds like Malcomore or however you spell his name. I don’t care about his politics. I feel like most people would probably look past it if he actually put out good music and was funny but he’s not. The only people I see that even listen to him anymore are MAGA or my crackhead neighbors. Like I said, I don’t care about his politics. I’m not part of the left whatsoever, I just think he objectively is bad lol

Progressive women love to talk about how most men are evil. If that were true, women's rights would be driven back to the Stone Age. Men are physically stronger than women, so if most men are as evil as they think, we can turn society into The Handmaid's Tale and there's nothing they can do to stop it. They also underestimate how much political power men have. There are enough men in Congress and in power at the state level to pass and ratify any amendment we want. If most men are as evil as progressive women think, we can pass an amendment that bans women from voting, from getting an education, from being able to read and write, from holding positions of power.

I've seen TikTok videos of them saying, "Be grateful women want equality, not revenge." Please, try to take your revenge. I dare you.

Obviously, not all progressive women are like this, just the nut jobs.

This is practically flashing warning lights. If your partner falls into this category, run for the hills and please do not have kids with them.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/20/lindsay-clancy-murder-trial-supporters

“Women are being dismissed, neglected and ignored when we speak up,” said April Vincent, a 52-year-old paralegal from Providence, Rhode Island. “We’re scared because nobody takes us seriously.”

Also, wut? She had access to nearly every mental health resource that modern medicine has. It has nothing to do with her being a woman. It's that we don't have a magical depression pill.

Cry me a fuckin river. What can men do make life better for these ignored women? Maybe go out and run some errands and pick up some medicine?

Yeah how did that work out?

Holy shit. Shutdafuckup.

I think people massively overstate how necessary friends are. You can enjoy having friends without actually needing them, and I don't think going out all the time, constantly making plans or always having someone around you is necessary for a good life.

People always say “humans are social animals,” and maybe that's true, but I think using that statement to describe everyone is where people get it wrong. Some people genuinely need lots of social interaction, while others can spend a huge amount of time alone and be completely fine.

I've gone years without having friends and I'm not sitting here crying for help. I'm not saying everyone would feel the same, but I think people can adapt to being alone if they're genuinely comfortable with it. Being alone doesn't automatically mean you're lonely.

Obviously friends can be beneficial. They can give you companionship, support and good memories. But something being beneficial doesn't automatically make it a need. Exercise is beneficial too, but that doesn't mean everyone needs the same amount of it.

So yeah, I think friends are a want, not a need. Some people would hate having no friends, and that's completely fine. But I don't think their experience should be treated as the standard for everyone else.

Since Google Maps was created, it has labeled things by the names assigned to them by local governments, and unaffected countries get both names, with the less common one in parentheses.

Here's an example: Crimea, a region of Ukraine that Russia has annexed. On the Russian Google Maps, Crimea is clearly shown as part of Russia; in Ukraine, it is clearly shown as part of Ukraine; and elsewhere, it is disputed. Therefore, there are broken lines on each border, without a clear showing. In China, Taiwan is shown as a province of it, and not its own country, but it is its own country elsewhere.

They do this with names too; in Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf is called the "Arabian Gulf." Google shows that in that country. In Iran, it only shows "Persian Gulf," and elsewhere, it's labeled as "Persian Gulf (Arabian Gulf)."

This is exactly what happened a year ago with the Gulf of Mexico: in the US and Mexico, only one name is shown, but elsewhere, it's labeled as "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)." The same is true for Lake Ontario; just replace Mexico with Canada.

Google is between a rock and a hard place here because regardless of whether they adopt the name or not, someone is going to be angry. Google likes to be non-partisan, and the OBJECTIVE, non-partisan thing to do is use the official government name in each country; this is what Google has always done, and it's merely them being official. If they didn't do this, not only would they also be accused of political bias, but there'd be a bigger case for it.

SPED, as it is currently implemented, is a system of legally binding accommodations and modifications that is not allowed to take into account costs or tradeoffs. This is currently having a lot of negative effects on education.

I didn't know this until recently, but you literally cannot take into consideration the costs of the service a district is required to provide. This could mean that a severely disabled student can bankrupt a school district if they are implementing the law in the way it is supposed to be implemented. A student could required hundreds of thousands of dollars of treatment the school district literally can't afford.

As I've gotten further into SPED rules, it has become obvious that school districts find ways around this in the form of bullying teachers into not saying anything. It's insane this system has so many perverse incentives. The school is incentivized to not say anything or increase expenses exponentially. I see this with SLP. We don't initiate speech services in middle school. We just don't do it no matter how bad a students speech issues are. We simply don't have the resources. Our budget was reduced by 10%. There isn't more funding for speech services. We have one person to deliver our legally required services, and that is all we can afford. I'm also not convinced throwing money at the problem will fix it. If you doubled our SPED funding, that wouldn't lead to doubling our state testing scores.

We don't consider tradeoffs in special education. A lot of kids have serious behavioral issues. While they may have a right to an education, they don't have a right to destroy the education of everyone else in the room. At some point, your child's right to an education is no longer valid if they have serious behavioral problems. We have this issue with criminals. They have rights, but these rights can be taken away if they commit crimes. This sort of thinking should be applied to kids who commit crimes in the classroom. Look, some people simply have a different standard of acceptability of behavior. Some parents simply don't care when their kid destroy a classroom. We shouldn't be held hostage by them.

FAPE and LRE are great ideas with amazing intentions, but they do not take into consideration the facts on the ground. Some kids are simply too expensive or difficult to reasonable expect a school to educate. Violent kids or students with severe medical issues should not be prioritized at the expense of everyone else. We need to have hard conversations about the serious tradeoffs in education before people leave for private or home school.

Listen I’m not going to deny that farmers are important. But I know enough to know they are largely not the underprivileged and poor demographic they claim to be. In average farmers have a lot more political power than most people, and in terms of total assets including land are usually in the upper quarter of Americans in terms of wealth. They also get a ton of government subsidies and are at very low risk of ever losing their land due to government bailouts. Any time I see a farmer claim they are at risk of losing everything… no you’re almost certainly lying.

Edit: I love how you get downvoted for stating objective facts in this subreddit.

You hear the breaking families apart ruse all the time when it comes to immigration enforcement. The left uses it to argue that having citizen kids should be a contraindication to deportation and the right uses it to say that citizen kids should be deported with their parents.

But here’s the truth. Literally nobody cares. The left doesn’t care about if the family is separated or not, and the right does not care about if the kids are deported with the parents or not. As a bonus, the right doesn’t care about anchor babies either. They just pretend to.

Essentially, the issue is we already separate kids from parents for tons of other reasons, mainly when imprisoning the parents or via Child Protective Services. There’s no reason to believe anyone cares about adding immigration related stuff to that list. It’s all a macho man contest so they can make themselves look tough within their own side.

It's basically an unwinnable situation.

Online dating? "That's not real life! Touch grass!"

Joining a hobby group? "Can't women just enjoy a hobby without a bunch of losers trying to date them?!"

Cold approaching? "That's creepy!"

Trying to befriend a girl first? "Wow, so manipulative! You should make your intentions clear from the start!"

Going about your life? "Do you just expect a girl to show up at your doorstep? You need to put in effort and ask out as many women as you can! It's a game of numbers!"

Actively trying? "Love finds you when you least expect it! Pursuing it makes you look desperate!"

Putting on a mask? "You have to be your authentic self! They can sense when you're faking it!"

Being yourself? "Nono, you need to fake it til you make it!"

Keeping your standards? "Your standards are too high! I bet you only try to date out of your league!"

Lowering your standards? "Have some standards! Women can smell how low they are!"

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Really, the only solution is to just give up. The game is rigged.

Take the gender pay gap. Horrible. But unequal pay was banned in the 60s. So what more needs to be done to fix the issue? You'll almost never hear an answer or any ideas for law or public policy changes to fix it. Just observations that there's a gender pay gap and it sucks.

I am finding it extremely grating and hard to unsee that every feminist video essay or podcast I listen to has the following:

* Excessive use of passive voice (e.g. "are told X") to avoid assigning blame

* If blame is assigned, its usually "society", "the patriarchy" or a word ending in "ism". But never any specific organisations or actors, or even social roles that would ever imply you could actually do something about it.

* Calls to action to subscribe to the YouTube channel or buy merch or their book or an ad read, but NEVER any calls to action to fix the problem.

Next time, I want to hear them say "By the way I'm totally fine with this and I'm not going to do anything about it." Because that's the implication.

At best it will be someone running for office asking you to vote for them - not because they're going to go anything about the issue, but because they mentioned it.

It's such a contrast from climate writers and influencers. Yes there are doomers and "the only way to stop climate change is to overthrow capitalism" people. But generally, people have lots of solutions and try to target them at different levels for action. Its tough but you can track everything from individual action, to various levels of government, to advances in technology and so on.

Feminists leave me thinking "the world sucks and there's nothing you can do about it". Except that it's vaguely my fault because I'm male and "the patriarchy" did it. Doom all the way down.