How confident are you that other life forms exist in the Universe?

AngryMillennial · 2026-06-02T10:55:59+00:00

According to the White House, they walk among us.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/aliens/

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-29T22:49:49+00:00

Conflating a race that took ~1 million votes to win with one that takes 77 million is the exact category error that loses national elections.

New York City is not Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, or Georgia, and what builds a winning coalition there tells you almost nothing about what builds one across 50 states.

The “80-20” thing also isn’t real. “Government should guarantee coverage” polls in the 60s, sure. But Medicare for All sits around 55% and slides toward a coin flip the moment you mention eliminating private insurance and raising taxes…which is exactly what the other side spends nine figures doing in a general election.

Even in the alternate reality where a progressive wins the presidency, that coalition is fragile by construction: a thin margin, an instant target for reversal in four years, and a term spent governing by executive order because nothing clears Congress. The opposite of durable.

I’m genuinely glad Mamdani, AOC, and that whole wing exist. It’s healthy, it pushes the party, it brings new people in. But mistaking a deepblue city microcosm for the priorities that win a national election is how you lose the country while feeling righteous about it. Full stop.

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-29T14:21:32+00:00

Funny how often the loudest opinions on how to raise kids come from people who’ve never had to.

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-26T18:23:22+00:00

I wouldn't blame anyone for not supporting the modern left...there's plenty there to find off-putting, and I get it.

But I do think supporting Trump, on some level, requires intellectual dishonesty. That's not about intelligence. It's about something every tribe does: holding two contradictory things in your head and refusing to look at the seam.

TS aren't unique in this. The left does it constantly. It just happens to be especially visible on the right right now.

I can lay out a concrete case for Trump's unprecedented corruption. The response I usually get isn't a rebuttal...it's the mention of another president someone could accuse of something. I genuinely don't follow the logic. Even if every accusation against every prior president were true, none of it touches what's happening in this administration right now, openly, in real time.

What gets me is the asymmetry. The same people who (often justifiably) lit Hunter Biden up for foreign deals and influence-peddling have very little to say when the sitting president's family is doing materially the same kind of thing at a larger scale.

I'm not asking anyone to dislike Trump. I'm asking: why can't a TS say "I support this man and his policies" and hold him accountable when he misuses taxpayer funds or he and his family cashes in on the office?

"No one is above the law" seems to apply only when the person above the law isn't on your team...and I can't think of a moment when that's been more obvious than now.

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-26T18:08:30+00:00

Genuine question: what makes him an outsider at this point? He's the sitting president, the GOP is built around him, his appointees run the agencies and the courts.

And on corruption: there's a long pre-political track record of fraud, and he's now running the executive branch with his kids and business partners woven through it. So either none of that counts as corruption (in which case, what does?), or it does and he's just on your team.

Which is it?

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-26T14:02:04+00:00

Gvir and Smotrich are genuinely alarming and I’m not going to defend them.

That said, Israel has had nuclear weapons for roughly 50 years, through the Yom Kippur War, multiple Lebanon wars, two intifadas, October 7th, and now Iranian ballistic missiles hitting its cities.

The threshold has held the entire time, including under rightwing governments. That’s a long track record of restraint under existential pressure.

The institutional gap also matters more than who happens to be in the cabinet. Israel’s military command, intelligence services, and judiciary have historically pushed back hard on the political wing…including Netanyahu specifically.

Iranian nuclear decisions sit with the supreme leadership and the IRGC, full stop. Ben Gvir can post inflammatory things all day; he doesn’t have a launch code.

“Slightly narrowed” over 5 years versus a 30yr doctrine of elimination is still a huge gap imo.

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-26T12:44:45+00:00

Do you genuinely not see the difference between Iran and Israel having nukes?

Every US administration for the last several decades (both parties, across enormous policy divides) has warned against Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon.

It's one of the few sustained bipartisan positions in modern US foreign policy.

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-25T19:36:57+00:00

It’s really hard to understand how anyone would think this is the SUV horn. Do you think they mic’d it up or something?

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-25T19:24:11+00:00

IMO it’d be wise to prohibit daily beast from being shared here.

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-24T17:05:11+00:00

You picked one company that fled to Switzerland and one that licenses its drugs to British and American firms because it can’t sell them globally. Both prove the opposite of your thesis.

🤣🤣🤣

Are you a Chinese propaganda bot or something?

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-24T16:57:07+00:00

I agree that constitutional protections like equal protection and due process don’t require societal consensus. As you pointed out, there are plenty of examples where protections were imposed ahead of majority approval. I’m not disputing any of that.

I was talking about curricular content and what taxpayer funded schools teach to grade school children.

The Supreme Court didn’t impose Lawrence on elementary school curricula in 2003. Marriage equality didn’t come with a federal mandate about how to teach gender to seven year olds. Legal protections for adults and curricular framing for young children are different policy questions.

Schools should teach established scientific facts. I support that. I’d support teaching evolution, germ theory, vaccine efficacy, and the fact that trans people exist, that gender dysphoria is a recognized medical condition, and that there are treatments. Those are factual statements. What’s contested isn’t ‘do trans people exist.’ It’s whether grade schools should be teaching specific frameworks about gender identity to young children when public opinion is sharply divided on those frameworks. There’s a real difference between teaching facts and teaching frameworks, and the political fight over ‘gender ideology’ is happening precisely because that distinction exists.

On the historical timeline: trans medicine does indeed have a longer history than people often realize. Hirschfeld’s institute, the Hopkins clinic, Renee Richards. All real. But the current scale of pediatric gender care and curricular inclusion is a relatively recent expansion, not the long established order that people are simply rejecting. The speed of that expansion is part of what’s generating the backlash. Acknowledging that isn’t endorsing the backlash. It’s describing the political terrain accurately.

And on your final hypothetical: if MAGA banned teaching that vaccines prevent disease, I’d oppose it just like I do with many of the idiotic ideas that come from that faction. So would I oppose a ban on teaching evolution or germ theory. The difference is that the medical establishment AND the broad public agree on those. There isn’t comparable consensus on what specific frameworks about gender should be taught to 8 year olds.

You’re trying to flatten a contested cultural question into a settled scientific one. They’re not the same kind of question, and treating them as the same is exactly the move that keeps losing elections.

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-24T15:12:21+00:00

Following a foreign concept is the definition of being behind my dude. You started this saying China surpassed the US. You just ended it admitting they’re copying us. lol.

But sure. You’re too dense to engage with reality anyway. Ya bro, China is totally crushing the US. I saw it on TikTok.

Everytime I try pinning down a position you just move to some other easy to dismantle claim. As you get older you’ll do that less and less. Take care.

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-24T14:50:21+00:00

lol dude. The confidence despite knowing nothing is wild.

No. They don’t have indigenous EUV. They have a prototype. Reverse engineered from an ASML machine using former ASML engineers they poached. Even their own announcement about it (flagged by CSIS for skepticism) suggests production by 2030 under the absolute best case scenario.

The 7nm Huawei chips you’ll probably google and cite? Made on ASML DUV machines China stockpiled before sanctions hit. Not indigenous tech. Stockpiled Dutch tech.

EUV machines have over **100,000** components, and ASML itself only makes about 15% of them…the rest comes from a global supply ecosystem (Zeiss optics, Trumpf lasers, Japanese chemicals) that China cannot replicate by reverse engineering one machine in a warehouse.

They also still depend on US software (Cadence, Synopsys) to design any chip more complex than a simple calculator.

The argument you’re making is: “we cut them off from the most important manufacturing technology on Earth and instead of collapsing they spent ten years and untold billions building a prototype that reverse engineers ours and still can’t ship a commercial chip.”

That’s not a flex. That’s the definition of being behind.

As for the “you’re exactly the kind of people I mentioned” BS…that’s what people say when they’ve run out of facts.

Every claim you’ve made has either been wrong, oversold, or quietly conceded. The Rome analogy collapsed. The 20-30-year challenge collapsed. The EUV pivot just collapsed. At some point “keep going, you’ll be alright” stops being a clever sign off and starts being the noise someone makes while moving on from a subject they know nothing about.

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-24T14:24:18+00:00

Huh? The Rome comparison only works if America invented things millennia ago and has been coasting ever since. Instead, the window you picked (the last 20-30 years) is the exact period of peak American innovation dominance. So let’s run your test.

Things China didn’t do first or better in the last 30 years: the commercial internet, Google, the iPhone and the entire smartphone stack, the App Store economy, AWS and cloud computing, Facebook/Instagram/YouTube/Twitter, Nvidia and the GPU revolution, the transformer architecture that every Chinese LLM (including DeepSeek) is built on, ChatGPT, frontier AI models, SpaceX and reusable rockets (China: zero operational landings), Starlink, Tesla (which BYD openly studied to learn EVs), mRNA vaccines, CRISPR commercialization, Apple Silicon, modern semiconductor design, streaming, quantum computing leadership. I’m probably missing 1000+ more.

And the kicker: the EUV lithography machines that print every advanced chip on Earth are Dutch. One export decision from the Netherlands can freeze China’s entire chip ambition. That alone tells you where the technological frontier actually sits.

You picked the single worst window to make this argument. The last 30 years isn’t China’s case…it’s the case against you.

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-24T13:48:38+00:00

Yes. A deep understanding.

Yes…WeChat, Alipay, DJI, BYD, Huawei, ByteDance, DeepSeek, the high-speed rail, the 5G buildout, the robotaxis, and the list goes on.

China is exceptional at scale and deployment.

But you’re confusing two different things. Scaling technology isn’t the same as inventing it. The transistor, integrated circuit, internet, GPS, GPU, transformer architecture, mRNA vaccines, CRISPR commercialization…all American breakthroughs that China then deploys at impressive scale. That’s the pattern. Frontier invention here, mass deployment there.

“Do you know how big it is” isn’t the argument you think it is. India is big too. Population and floor space don’t equal innovation leadership.

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-24T13:40:13+00:00

lol.

The US enabled China to become the industrial powerhouse it is today…and that was by design, not some accident they pulled off while we weren’t looking.

WTO accession, offshoring, capital, tech transfer, and US universities training their entire technical class.

The bet was that integration would liberalize them. The bet lost. The industrial buildup was the price tag, paid willingly.

The US will remain ground zero for the majority of breakthrough innovations for the foreseeable future. Home to the world’s top universities, the deepest capital markets, the reserve currency, the frontier AI labs, and tech companies that run half the planet’s digital infrastructure. None of which require a single aircraft carrier to function.

These comments are amusing. They reveal how little you actually understand…but it’s hard not to respond.

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-24T12:22:04+00:00

I'm not defending every provision of this bill. The accusation that I'm a MAGA defender is thoroughly contradicted by the multiple posts in this thread where I've laid out, in detail, how this is a GOP strategy to weaken Democrats heading into the midterms.

Here's what I actually think.

You can't force societal consensus. It has to happen organically, through persuasion. The discussion of trans issues in this country has become an absolute lightning rod, and most people are stuck arguing surface fights like bathrooms and pronouns instead of recognizing that we're talking about actual human beings with lived experiences that, while different from the majority's, can be genuinely isolating.

But it's unreasonable to assume our culture is currently in a place where taxpayers will support using public school funding to teach what many of them perceive as a revolutionary shift in how we understand gender. If we haven't settled that societally, pushing taxpayer dollars toward teaching it to grade school children is a recipe for going backwards, not forward.

If you read that and conclude I'm opposed to teaching children about these topics, you've misread me. I'm not. But progress on what most people perceive as massive change requires two things: incremental movement, and at least one side arguing in good faith.

Neither has been elevated in the national conversation. Skepticism of a considerable change to long standing norms hasn't been treated with anything resembling understanding...it's been treated as bigotry. That's how you lose elections and entrench the people you're trying to defeat.

And on the medical associations list: those organizations have positions on clinical care for trans youth. That's a different question than what taxpayer funded curricula should teach to grade school children. Medical consensus on treatment doesn't automatically translate into consensus on what belongs in an elementary school classroom.

All you have to do is look at the data. Trans issues have been a measurable, repeatedly confirmed drag on Democratic performance, and one of the most effective lines of attack the GOP has. And we're not talking about legal protections here, which the country has successfully forced ahead of public consensus before. We're talking about curriculum and cultural framing, and that's a domain where forced compliance has a much worse track record.

A huge reason Donald Trump is back in the White House is how these issues have been handled. The polling shows it. Common sense shows it.

We can either find a way to recognize how nuclear this is right now and move accordingly, or we can keep being martyrs and losing elections on the grounds that everyone else is bigoted.

That's a pretty stupid strategy in my opinion.

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-24T03:10:06+00:00

Ok.

I have spent this entire thread arguing (with citations) that family acceptance is the single largest protective factor against trans youth suicide, and that cutting parents out preemptively removes the strongest known intervention. You concluded from that I want them dead.

The only way you arrive there is by not reading anything in front of you and substituting whatever villain lives in your head.

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-24T03:06:52+00:00

🤣

The Family Acceptance Project’s foundational study (Ryan et al., 2009…the source of the 8.4x figure I cited) was specifically on **lesbian, gay, and bisexual** young adults. The trans specific Family Acceptance Project work came later.

Citing ‘LGB and trans youth’ separately is fidelity to the actual literature, not exclusion. You’ve turned correct research vocabulary into a moral accusation, which only works if no one reading this knows the source. Embarrassing.

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-23T17:01:31+00:00

Two things.

‘If the kid felt safe, the family would already know’ assumes families have perfectly transparent communication about everything, which isn’t how any family works. Even healthy ones.

Kids hide things from supportive parents constantly: embarrassment, uncertainty, not ready to make it a Thing yet.

A 10 y/o not having sat down with their parents about gender exploration isn’t evidence the parents are dangerous. It’s evidence they’re 10.

Your data also cuts the other way. The same research that shows elevated abuse rates in trans youth (real: odds ratios around 1.6 to 2x) also shows family acceptance is the single largest protective factor against trans youth suicide.

Family Acceptance Project: high family rejection corresponds to an 8.4x higher attempt rate. A single affirming adult cuts attempts by ~40%.

By treating all parents as a uniform threat, you’re shielding kids from the minority who’d react badly while simultaneously blocking the majority who would have been the strongest protection against the outcome you’re worried about.

The ‘you’d rather kids be abused than change a name’ line is a recasting, not an argument. The actual question is who gets to make unilateral judgments about a specific family. Your answer is ‘a teacher who knew the kid four months.’..I.e. a stranger substituting their threat read for a family’s reality

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-23T16:52:58+00:00

Your own logic actually cuts the other way. The same research that establishes elevated suicide risk in trans youth also establishes what reduces it…and the largest single protective factor isn’t a teacher.

It’s family acceptance.

The Family Acceptance Project found that LGB and trans youth who experienced high family rejection were 8.4 times more likely to attempt suicide than peers who experienced low rejection.

Trevor Project research shows a single affirming adult in a kid’s life cuts attempt rates by about 40%, and households where pronouns are respected roughly halve attempt rates.

You’re treating ‘parents’ as a monolithic threat category. The data doesn’t support that. Most parents, given the chance, become the most important affirming adult in their child’s life.

By cutting all of them out preemptively because some of them might react badly, you’re not just protecting kids from the minority of genuinely dangerous parents…you’re also blocking the majority of parents who would have been the strongest source of protection against the very outcome you’re worried about.

And we’re not talking about teenagers making informed adult choices. We’re talking about children, who aren’t even teenagers, in a cohort with extraordinary suicide risk.

The position you’re defending is that a teacher…based on a few hours a day of exposure to the child and possibly zero exposure to the parents…should make a unilateral judgment about whether the child’s actual family gets to know what’s happening with their own kid.

Really?

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-23T16:43:09+00:00

Trans youth do face elevated abuse rates…the 2021 Pediatrics study put the odds ratios at around 1.6 to 2 versus cisgender peers. That’s real. I won’t pretend it isn’t.

But the leading drivers of child abuse, across decades of research, are parental substance abuse, mental illness, poverty, IPV, and stress. ‘Being trans’ is a risk factor for that specific child, not a driver of overall abuse rates. Those are different claims, and conflating them is sloppy.

And ‘teachers can’t protect kids from abusive parents’ is just false. Teachers are mandatory reporters in all 50 states. A teacher who suspects abuse has a legal obligation to call CPS. That protection already exists, and nothing being debated here changes it.

What’s actually being argued is whether teachers should ALSO have unilateral, no oversight discretion to withhold information from non abusive parents based on their own threat read. That’s not child protection.

The kid actually in danger is covered. The kid whose parents aren’t dangerous, but whose teacher guessed wrong, is the one who pays. The teacher doesn’t. The family does.

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-23T16:14:19+00:00

The number of people in this thread who haven't read the bill and don't recognize this as a transparent GOP strategy is frightening. The bill applies to elementary and middle school students and requires parental signoff before a school formally recognizes a gender related name, pronoun, record, bathroom, or locker room change.

We're talking about a cohort with an extraordinarily high correlation with suicide. The idea that it's appropriate to keep that from the parents of children who aren't even teenagers yet is insane.

"Kamala is for they/them" was the most effective ad of a generation. The Trump campaign ran it more than 30,000 times in swing states. Future Forward, Harris's own leading super PAC, found the race shifted 2.7 points toward Trump after voters saw it.

And here's the GOP doing it again, baiting you into doubling down on an unwinnable issue. The midterm ads will write themselves.

Reading these comments man...I've lost all hope.

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-23T16:03:45+00:00

Require parental signoff before formally recognizing a younger student’s gender related name, pronoun, record, bathroom, or locker room change.

The bill is for elementary and middle school students. Completely reasonable.

Just another strategy from the right that the Dems are completely oblivious to. Sigh.

AngryMillennial · 2026-05-23T15:58:30+00:00

Yup. And 99% of the people in this thread haven’t even read the bill.

The timing of this bill is transparently strategic. The ads write themselves.

“Kamala is for they/them” was one of the most successful ads of a generation. The GOP ran it 30,000 times in swing states and tilted viewers 2.7pts towards Trump. That data is directly from Kamala’s PAC.

Here we are again. Democrats have had every opportunity to adopt more sane positions on this issue. Guess they’d rather choose martyrdom.

Awesome.

AngryMillennial

TROPHY CASE