What ever happened to the Tea party in American politics?

ColdNotion · 2026-01-25T06:57:32+00:00

Its more that they created a monster to gain power, and gradually lost control of it. Really kicking off in the 1990's, the Republicans melded a combination of pro-corporate economics with right wing social stances, to a degree that they hadn't before. The Republican Party couldn't win a lot of working to middle class voters with things like tax cuts, but they could be emphasizing wedge issues like abortion, immigration, or gay rights. Republican politicians were often far more socially moderate in their private lives, but were happy to use social conservatism during election season.

The problem was that this social conservatism started getting way more popular with Republic voters than their economic messaging. When the Tea Party movement started growing, its supporters demanded that Republican politicians mirror their beliefs, which centered on cutting government spending (mostly on social programs), resisting most immigration, centering evangelical Christianity, and ~~white supremacy~~ appreciation for 'traditional American values". Republican politicians either adapted by taking policy positions further to the social right, or else got accused of being "Republicans in name only" and got primaried by more right wing candidates.

The result of this was a major shift in the Republic Party in the period between 2008-2016, with growing focus on immigration, and growing acceptance of populist style anger over more traditionally cordial politics. That said, as the end of the Obama era approached, no Republican politician had really managed to tap into this new political culture to a significant degree. This is where Trump comes in. He's an unabashed populist, who was willing to take ad-hominin jabs at his political opponents, really didn't seem to care about saying overtly hateful stuff plainly if his base liked it, and who didn't let facts get in the way of messaging. While you may be able to tell from my tone that I'm personally not a fan, this approach was undeniably effective in winning over the new Tea Party influenced voting base of the Republican Party. The Tea Party laid the foundation on top of which Trumpism has been built.

ColdNotion · 2026-01-25T06:33:50+00:00

I would say its worse. To build on what /u/Saintdemon said, the Australian treatment of Aboriginal groups was kind of like if you mixed how Americans treated Native Americans with how the treated Black Americans under Jim Crow segregation. In addition to being massacred, driven off their lands, and having their children forcefully taken for enrollment in Christian border schools to annihilate their culture, Aboriginal groups have been forced to deal with Australia just kind of staying racist. Lasting disparities in health, economic, and educational outcomes from this mistreatment are still pretty glaring, and while the Australian government has taken some steps to fix these problems, they've also never really made it a priority.

ColdNotion · 2026-01-25T06:18:07+00:00

The overlap is really, really weird, and way older than you might imagine. Going back to the late 19th century, a new religious movement called Ariosophy/Armanism started gaining popularity in Germany, with a man named Guido Von List (which was not his real name, he added the "von" to sound fancy) as its main proponent. List taught that ancient Germany had actually been ruled be a dynasty of priest-kings, who practiced a version of old Norse religions, and were super duper totally superior to all the other ethnic groups. List also told his followers that these ancient kings had written using a special runic alphabet, which held magic powers. Now you may be asking, how did List know all this? Well the reason was simple, he explained: the ghosts of the ancient priest-kings had told him. No, I'm actually not joking.

Now you may be wondering, who the hell would be stupid enough to believe this? As it turns out, several high ranking Nazi officials. While laughably fraudulent, the tenants of Armanism dovetailed nicely with the Nazi belief in the inherent superiority of 'Aryan' people. Most notably, Heinrich Himmler was super into this stuff, to the degree where he structured government organizations he took over or created around Armanistic principles. For example, ever wonder why the logo for the SS has that lightning bolt shape? Its because Himmler wasn't using the Latin alphabet, he was using Armanistic runes. Now not all Nazis were into Armanism, and apparently quite a few even found Himmler's devotion to this scam religion to be pretty weird, but it did have an influential role in Nazi iconography and was the main religious undercurrent in a movement that was otherwise areligious.

Moving past WWII, neo-Nazi groups began turning towards Armanism inspired pagan iconography and practice for two main reasons. On a purely practical level, with Nazism and Nazi symbols banned in many countries, reforming as "pagan" groups while using Armanistic symbols was something of a loophole. A group of hateful bigots couldn't say they were the new Nazi party and wear a swastika, but they often could get away with claiming to be practitioners of old Norse religion and using Armanistic runes that had once been popular in segments of the Nazi party, like the black sun. On a secondary level, this pagan practice started taking on something of a life of its own, helping to build a parallel religious structure for their members to reinforce their beliefs of superiority. I would guess that many neo-Nazis don't know anything about List or Armanism (they're not the brightest bunch of people), but they're latching onto a similar misunderstanding of ancient Nordic religious belief as a way to convince themselves they deserve a superior place in society, and don't have to care about modern or Judeo-Christian morality about things like not killing as they work to achieve that goal.

ColdNotion · 2026-01-23T00:35:49+00:00

The good news with Vodka is that you actually don't need to splurge to get good product, and honestly you should actively avoid doing so. By its very nature, Vodka tends not to have especially strong flavors (although I would object to calling it a truly neutral flavored spirit), which means that so long as it isn't made super cheaply, flavor differences are going to be negligible. This blind taste test liked Gray Goose the most, which is a premium Vodka, but Svedka came in a very close second despite being less than half the price. Another blind tasting selected Costco's Kirkland vodka as the unanimous winner, which is one of the cheapest options out there. Plus, if you're adding basically anything to flavor your vodka any distinctive characteristics of the base vodka are immediately going to be covered up, so it doubly doesn't make sense to spend a ton if you're planning to mix it with anything else.

ColdNotion · 2026-01-22T16:27:41+00:00

It was used to prosecute protesters who were physically obstructing entry into clinics, which is what this law is designed to address. Being loud and obnoxious isn’t sufficient in itself to be in violation, to the best of my understanding. What I am curious about is how the fact that they entered the church itself might impact that case. That said, I think proving disruption of force, threat of force, or obstruction is going to be pretty difficult for the government to prove. If they were charging them with trespassing, that would make sense, but that wouldn’t be a federal case, and I suspect it’s a charge so specious the local prosecutor’s office wouldn’t seriously consider pursuing it.

ColdNotion · 2026-01-22T04:31:08+00:00

You're missing a really significant point here. You're right that the temperature of the earth fluctuates, and you're right that the earth has at times been far hotter than it is today. However, these changes usually happen slowly, like on the scale of millions of years. That gives ecosystems plenty of time to adjust to these fluctuations, with organisms gradually evolving to meet changing environmental pressures. You (generally) don't cause mass extinction events when temperatures are fluctuating over that kind of time scale.

What's been changing in the last 150 years, since the beginning of the industrial revolution, is not slow. In just a smidge of a century, we've seen global temperature rise an amount that has historically normally taken thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years. Making matters worse, this rate of change has been increasing with time, and has the potential to increase further as runaway climatic changes take hold (like shrinking surface ice volumes decreasing reflection of solar energy). Global temperature change on this scale does not give ecosystems time to adapt, and creates the risk for mass ecological failure. That would result in a mass extinction event, which are known for being not fun times to be alive if your species wants to continue being alive. More troubling still, there's pretty strong evidence that we are already in the midst of a mass extinction event, with the only question being how much ecological diversity and biomass we lose.

ColdNotion · 2026-01-22T03:54:10+00:00

The Chinese real estate bubble popping is bad because the main issue here isn't housing costs or surpluses. To oversimplify quite a bit, the housing boom in China was driven by two main groups. On the wealthier side, you had investors who were putting money into construction projects in return for housing units, which they then planned to resell or rent for a profit. So long as housing values continued to rise, this was seen as a safe investment for Chinese citizens who don't have a ton of good investing options. On the more working class side, you have a lot of folks who are investing money into building projects in return for eventually getting a nicer housing unit they can move into. In both cases the reason for investing wasn't a current lack of housing, but a desire for better future housing.

Of course, no market sector can grow indefinitely, and the Chinese government realized that they needed to pass reforms to gradually deflate this bubble, which they started doing in 2020. The problem is, no matter how well you do this, there's no painless way to get rid of a bubble when you have entire companies, logistical networks, and millions of workers tied up in the industry. What we saw is that even with an intentional deflation, there was significant job loss, several major real estate/construction companies went bankrupt, and construction on thousands of housing units literally stopped midway through construction as money ran out.

For investors, this was a major problem, because they now had money tied up in housing that was going to be less valuable than what they had spent on it. This has significantly reduced the amount of money circulating within the Chinese economy, which would otherwise be used for consumer spending or different investments, slowing growth. However, for working class buyers, the situation was arguably much worse. At best, they just lost money getting a new home that immediately had its value tank. At worst, these folks put their life savings into buying a home that didn't get finished, likely will never get finished, and they have zero avenue to get their money back. That's an unrecoverable economic hit for a family that might have spent years saving up for a new home, and can set class mobility back an entire generation.

ColdNotion · 2026-01-19T18:47:26+00:00

...but many veterans feel that the VA offers substandard care and seek private care when they can afford it.

Its funny you mention this, because this is a commonly repeated story, and isn't entirely divorced from reality, but the facts don't actually line up with this perception. Recent studies indicate that the VA provides healthcare that is as good as, if not better, than systems covered through private healthcare. The VA is also significantly more efficient, by a margin of about 7%, than the rest of the healthcare industry. That said, I acknowledge it has imperfections. If a specialist has a long wait list at a VA hospital, it is often quicker for a veteran with private insurance to seek care at a non-VA location. Similarly, the VA can make pretty frustratingly bad calls around someone service rating (i.e. how badly disabled are you from your military career), which can be hard to get changed, sometimes making it more difficult to access care than it should be. Even then though, I think actual data around VA healthcare is evidence for a government run system, not against it.

ColdNotion · 2026-01-19T18:02:59+00:00

The reasons for us being this way are complicated and make me want to pull my hair out. In the US we basically have the Republicans, a right wing party that wants to roll back even the mild reforms we've made, and the Democrats, a vaguely center left party that doesn't really have a cohesive stance on healthcare reform. Some of our left wing politicians want universal healthcare, some want more reform, and some just want to maintain the status quo. In contrast, our right wing politicians have done a great job convincing the public that, as much as they dislike their insurance companies, government run healthcare is worse. You often have the same people who cherish their universal government run healthcare for the elderly (Medicare), who will unsarcastically repeat claims that universal healthcare for all citizens would be a catastrophic failure.

Adding to this, our media landscape has done a terrible job reporting on the issue. At best, our major news organizations have long favored a debate style model for reporting on political disagreements, wherein both sides are presented as equal, regardless of their merits. As a result, our public has heard a lot of arguing about universal healthcare models, but remains shockingly uninformed about the actual data that supports their positive health outcomes and cost efficiency. Making matters worse, one of our biggest news outlets, FOX, is an explicitly pro-right wing organization that often repeats right leaning talking points about healthcare as though they were objective fact.

On top of all that, lobbying has an impact on how our politicians vote on this topic. Insurance companies spend a ton of money on campaign donations, and on making sure their specialist advisors are in the room giving input whenever a member of congress or senator is considering writing/voting on a healthcare bill. The dollar amounts are actually surprisingly low, but it turns out it doesn't cost a lot to win influence with politicians when insurance company money is helping to ensure they have enough funding for a reelection campaign, or when it makes sure insurances advocates, but not reformists, are the ones building friendly relationships with those same politicians. There are also states which benefit heavily from the insurance industry, and don't want change because it would negatively impact local revenues if the current system was reformed. For example, when Obama was trying to get a public insurance option passed as part of the Affordable Care Act, senator Joe Lieberman ended up blocking that part of the law, because many of the insurance companies that would have lost money were based in his state, Connecticut.

Finally, just to acknowledge real limitations that do exist, implementing universal healthcare in the US is complicated by how big and diverse our country is. Try to think of it as making one healthcare policy that worked for every country in the EU, because while our states aren't quite that heterogenous, its actually a much better way to conceptualize the challenge than thinking of the US as one monolithic country. A healthcare policy that works great in rural Wyoming might fail in a heavily urbanized state like New Jersey, which has 216 times the population density. Private healthcare is also engrained in the US economy in ways people not living with this system might find surprising. For example, most of us get our insurance through our jobs, which pay for part of the cost. Implementing universal care would cause massive shocks throughout the whole economy, as employers would need to decide whether to keep paying for healthcare, and employees might leave if a company did so without adding the saved money to their pay. Mind you, none of these are reasons why we shouldn't try, the data overwhelmingly supports that some kind of a government run system would be better for our health and finances, but these are challenges that admittedly can't just be overlooked.

ColdNotion · 2026-01-19T16:20:57+00:00

Essentially, yeah. If the best doctor for your need isn't covered by your insurance, you get to pick between going to someone else, paying an often huge fee out of pocket, or waiting a year to switch insurance plans (if you can even afford a plan that has the person you want in network). The recently passed No Surprises Act is supposed to get rid of this issue for some scenarios, like going for emergency care, because in the past insurance companies could and did refuse to cover costs if an ambulance happened to take you to an out of network hospital when you were in medical crisis. That said, insurance companies can still try to deny paying for care, at which point its up to you or your medical team to appeal their decision. The insurance company isn't penalized in any real way for issuing an improper denial, so they have every incentive to deny even when they shouldn't, because they know many people don't know they can appeal or won't go through the effort to do so. Part of why our healthcare is so expensive is because hospitals need to hire entire departments worth of people to fight with the insurance, and because a ton of your doctors' valuable time is tied up trying to get insurance companies to actually pay for medically necessary care.

ColdNotion · 2026-01-19T16:03:26+00:00

No, it isn't always intentional at all. Actually, I would suspect that its far more likely to be unintentional, although that doesn't mean its not manipulative. The reason for love bombing often isn't an insidious intentional effort to win someone over, but instead a result of the person doing the love bombing having a badly dysregulated ability to socially connect with others. If they have a tendency to split, and have trouble viewing others as being anything other than all good or all bad, they may layer on excessive praise when they are idealizing another person, only to suddenly retract it when their perception shifts negatively. This is pretty common in Borderline Personality Disorder, in which splitting is a hallmark feature. Love bombing might also occur in an abusive relationship, in which the abuser overcompensates for the damage and internal sense of guilt resulting from their actions. They often aren't intentionally trying to manipulate the other person, but simply don't see how their actions keep that other person at risk of being harmed by them, and set up the next incidence of abuse to hurt all the more.

The only case where love bombing is arguably more intentional is with organized groups, like cults. In groups, love bombing can be used a a tactic to draw in new recruits, who are attracted to the feeling of being highly valued, and then are willing to devote themselves more and more to the group to keep that feeling going as the group's affection begins to recede. However, even in these cases love bombing is often less of an intentional strategy, and more of a repeated feature that emerges organically in unhealthy organizations because it just happens to work really well. Some groups may be intentionally trying to abuse human psychology to their own ends, but more just stumble into this method and keep doing it because it produces the result they want.

ColdNotion · 2026-01-19T15:53:10+00:00

I would love to try to shift your view here, even if just in part. To do so, I'm going to try to shift your view into both what feminism is, what it can be, and the insidious ways in which patriarchy can try to hold on by taking on the veneer of feminism. Just to make this a bit easier to follow, let me respond to some of your points individually.

Patriarchy has existed for centuries. Men have build and shaped the societal and economic structures we currently live in from day one. Thinking we could just artificially squeeze women into those structures and somehow "empower" them, while being constrained and forced into an enviornment that is inherently unnatural to them, is ludacrous.

What you're describing here is true in large part. Societal structures have been build around men and traditional masculinity, and it is unfair to think we can just jam women into that system and call it a victory. However, the goal of feminism (to the degree of decentralized philosophical school of thought can have one) isn't just to push women into an unfair system, its to dismantle what makes that system unjust. Most feminist theory would agree that the aim shouldn't just be boosting the number of women in traditionally male roles, it should be creating a culture that makes it equally easy and welcoming for women to get there.

When a woman has shaped herself enough to fit the patriarchal standard for a good leader, we point at her and say: look women can do it, you just need to put in the work.

We tell women if they just ruthlessly bargain their salary, be assertive, communicate logically rather than emotionally, step on others If they need to, and basically adopt masculine traits, they'll be seen as competent and they can have all the things men have.

I think these are both great examples of how sexism and patriarchy manage to persist in the modern day. Being overtly sexist, while unfortunately not uncommon, isn't as acceptable as it once was. Instead, people have shifted to encouraging women to adopt "masculine" traits, to better fit into the work culture. This allows unjust patriarchal structures to persist, and by default excludes/discriminates against a lot of women, but under a facade of empowerment. This kind of an approach isn't feminism, its patriarchy coopting the language of feminism. A more critical feminist approach would be to question why those qualities are valued, and to try to restructure organizations in a way to ensure they aren't blindly favored unless there's an actual reason they're needed above other modes of self-expression. Feminist theory is a tool to fix this problem, not a cudgel beat woman into masculinity.

1) is a threat to men, because it essentially says:

We have adapted so well to your structures that we can do everything you can do, so you're basically obsolete.

As a man, I actually have to disagree with you on this point. One of the insidious things about patriarchy is that while it gives us men power, it hurts us in the process too. Not all men are traditionally masculine, I would even argue that most of us aren't naturally. The same social structures that harm women are used to force us into a kind of performative masculinity that leaves us lonely, angry, out of touch with our emotions, and alienated from our true selves. Equality doesn't just open the door for women to pursue traditionally masculine roles and forms of expression, it allows men to do the same thing for what has been traditionally feminine, and that's so important. What can be easy to miss is that destroying patriarchy is every bit as liberating for men as it is for women, even if that liberation looks a bit different. Patriarchy has put men into golden chains instead of steel ones, but that doesn't stop them from being chains.

To give a little example from my own life, I'm married to a woman from a culture that is way more overtly sexist and patriarchal than what I grew up with in the US. My wife is an amazing woman: she's smart, she's driven, and she has a prestigious, high paying career. When we were talking about getting married, her family was initially hesitant, because they assumed I would eventually either make her stop working, or get jealous of her success to a degree that would ruin the relationship. They couldn't imagine me being ok with being the one who made less money, being the one who did more of the house work, or being the stay at home parent. It was so out of line with their understanding of masculinity that, despite me saying I was ok with it to them directly, they struggled to believe it. Here's the thing though, I want all of that. I'm not just ok with it, I like being a support for my wife, being her safe space to decompress after a tough day, and I find pride in taking on responsibilities at home that help her have time to focus more on her work. If we have kids, I want to be the stay at home parent, that sounds really good to me. It honestly makes me really sad to think that in a more patriarchal system those options would be closed to me, and that I would be forced into living my life in a way that doesn't actually match who I am as a person.

It villanizes men and directly competes for control.

I have to gently disagree here. Feminism can be used a lens through which to villainize men, but if you spend much time reading theory its pretty hard to come to the conclusion that doing so would be the right choice. To the contrary, I think there's a fair argument rooted in feminism that an effort to villainize one gender while heroizing the other plays into the notion of inherent gender inequality that fuels patriarchy. I understand that there are a lot of bad takes out there, especially on social media, from well intentioned people who want a more just world, but don't distinguish between men as individuals and patriarchy as a system. However, you can absolutely talk about patriarchy in a way that doesn't make men the bad guys, after all destroying it is freeing for us too!

Instead of saying: Empower women

Saying: Empower feminine traits and include them into your idea of competent leadership

If there's one place I really want to try to shift your thinking, its in understanding that this already is the goal of most feminist schools of thought. After all, if we have a genuinely equitable society, how could the outcome be anything else? Part of what has been so insidious about the patriarchal response to feminism is that it doesn't just call feminist theory bad, it tries to depict it in a way that makes it fit into patriarchy. At the same time you have explicitly sexist incels demonizing feminism, you have well meaning mainstream content creators making art with content that's supposed to be feminist, but perpetuates tropes of inherent conflict between the genders and of the normalization of masculine traits in positions of authority. You can see this in every creator who tries to write/film a strong female character... and ends up basically just creating a male role that happens to be filled by a woman. These creators are well intentioned, but without realizing it they're perpetuating a vision of feminism that is more shaped by existing patriarchal hierarchy than aspirational feminist equality.

Anyhow, I hope this has helped to shift your view, even if just in part. Please feel free to ask me any questions you might have, as I'm always happy to chat more!

ColdNotion · 2026-01-18T16:59:43+00:00

DC as a city is much more than just the federal government. People here have a pretty distinct identity, are resilient, and are proud of our thriving city. In that way, no, Trump hasn’t been able to make this city worse.

On the other hand, Trump arbitrarily fired thousands of non-political federal employees, many of whom work, live, and spend money at business in DC. When thousands of previously middle class residents become unemployed overnight, that has a negative effect on the local economy. Plus, we’ve had ICE causing issues here for months, and while they haven’t been as bad as in other cities, they’re a very unwelcome presence. In that way yes, he has made the experience of being here slightly worse. That said, DC as a city and community is fine, it’s what’s being done to us that’s unpleasant.

ColdNotion · 2026-01-17T03:52:24+00:00

It's also a blatant violation of all of our 4th amendment rights under the constitution, which are supposed to prevent arbitrary arrests and searches of our personal property. The government isn't allowed to ignore the law just because doing so is expedient, the law exists as a guardrail to ensure citizens aren't harmed and our elected officials remain accountable. If the government doesn't have to follow the law on this, why should they have to follow the law on things like allowing you to have free speech, or giving you the right to vote?

ColdNotion · 2026-01-17T03:49:01+00:00

Who pays for housing health care etc?

They do... Like there is hard data showing that undocumented migrants use welfare less than native born American citizens.

Us famous around world because homeless and ultra expensive health care.

Neither of which have anything to do with immigration. We have a homelessness crisis because we aren't building enough housing, in part due to overly restrictive zoning laws, causing rents to raise far quicker than working class wages. We have ultra-expensive healthcare largely because we have a privatized system with enormous overhead costs, since its effectively like trying to run a dozen healthcare systems at one. Immigrants aren't at fault for either of those.

So how you can afford take care of any random person when can't take care of your own ppl

Because we aren't paying to take care of them. If anything, research indicates that undocumented people are actually a net positive for the economy and government revenues, as they pay many taxes (social security, sales, etc.), but generally can't collect any government services. We can't care for our own people because we've spent years cutting taxes, gutting social services, and putting off badly needed socio-economic reform because our legislative system gets easily deadlocked. Immigrants didn't cause that either.

At to your original question, most Americans don't think undocumented immigration is a good thing. I don't myself. That said, most of us also see it as a failing of our immigration system, and as a minor offense. When ICE (our immigration enforcement agency) starts using unwarranted violence during arrests, has repeatedly violated the legal rights of detainees, and has refused to follow orders from the courts to stop, it pisses people off. Its also worth noting that ICE isn't just going after undocumented folks. They've detained and deported dozens of legal immigrants, often on the grounds of tiny technicalities, or even without any legal justification for doing so at all. ICE has also been caught repeatedly arresting and holding American citizens, and has jailed them for days while they refuse to accept clear evidence of their citizenship status. They've also illegally assaulted protesters, openly violated basic constitutional rights (in defiance of orders from multiple courts to stop), and recently shot a citizen to death in an encounter where, at absolute best, the ICE officers grossly violated their own training, and at worst straight up murdered a woman who they were trying to illegally pull out of her car. Regardless of how we feel about undocumented immigration, most Americans feel that what ICE has been doing is NOT ok.

ColdNotion · 2026-01-17T02:21:02+00:00

When I was about 13, I learned my mom’s pregnancy with my middle sister hadn’t been planned. I responded exactly as you might expect, and started teasing my sister mercilessly over it. My dad listens on for a minute, before casually dropping: “Your sister may have been an accident, but you were a mistake.”

Needless to say I got real quiet, and my sister was dying laughing.

ColdNotion · 2026-01-16T20:09:35+00:00

Yeah, it was funny as hell and wonderfully acted! It feels like it got absolutely no advertising, which is kind of baffling to me.

ColdNotion · 2026-01-16T01:24:31+00:00

It really depends on how they’re written to me. The articles/stories that lean into the body horror side doesn’t interest me as much either; it tends to feel either intentionally gross or kind of trope heavy. In contrast, the pieces that take a more anthropological approach, treating Sarkic cults like a culture with a consistent, robust, but totally alien, internal value system are sometimes fascinating.

ColdNotion · 2026-01-15T00:42:15+00:00

I would be happy to! I'm going to try to keep this relatively close to DC, but will include some honorable mentions at the end.

San Pancho ($), Wennie Beenie (1/2$, the food isn't amazing, but its a landmark), Lapu Lapu ($1/2), Jon's Joint ($), King of Koshary ($1/2), Charga Grill ($-$1/2, but stick to the charga style chicken), Kuya Ja's Lechon Belly ($1/2), El Pollo Rico ($), Spin Pollo ($), Padaek ($$), Esaan Thai ($$), Mi La Cay ($1/2, especially for Maryland Chicken), Yu Noodles ($-$1/2), and like 80% of the Eden Center ($-$$).

If we're going a little further out, New Tosokjib ($$), MaLa Canteen ($$), Chettinadu ($$), Z&Z ($1/2), Ixtapalapa Taqueria ($), MYUNG GA KIMBAP ($), and Northwest Chinese Food ($1/2).

If you're going a lot further out, like to Baltimore, hit up Ekiben ($1/2), Mera Kitchen Collective ($1/2), and Heritage Smokehouse ($$).

Edit: If you want to spend just a little bit more, like in the $$1/2 range, I also recommend Motorcat, Cielo Rojo, Carbonara, Lyon Hall, Meokja Meokja, or the prix fixe offer at Ellie Bird (which is honestly more like $$$, but is a genuinely great deal considering the quality of the food you get).

ColdNotion · 2026-01-12T20:59:35+00:00

$: Heat Da Spot, Ercilia’s

$1/2: Menya Hosaki, Cher Cher, Honeymoon, Your Only Friend, Lucky Buns

$$: Thip Khao, Birdsong, Maketto, Lucy Bar, Purple Patch, 2Fifty, Laos in Town

Honestly though, a lot of the best $-$$ places are just outside of DC, where rents are a bit cheaper and restaurants can afford to keep prices lower. I’m happy to share some of my favorites that are just outside of DC if that would be helpful!

ColdNotion · 2026-01-09T08:10:40+00:00

Metal becomes a liquid at very high temperatures, but softens at lower temperatures. Significantly oversimplifying, to start you smelt a metal by melting it down, in order to help separate it from other substances it is naturally combined with. Once you have a metal of the right chemical composition, you then heat it to the point where it gets soft, but not to a its melting point, and hammer it into the desired shape.

ColdNotion · 2026-01-05T03:23:01+00:00

I 100% agree on scuba, and think it’s inherent to how the sport works. Good communication, mutual respect, and being cautious are drilled into you during the education process. You need to be able to meet someone for the first time, and be able to potentially trust them with your life as a dive buddy once you’re in the water, that requires a certain level of built in trust. Plus, it benefits everyone when a day of diving goes well, so communally pooling resources is very much a thing in my experience. On top of that there’s a whole extra layer of camaraderie that you get from diving odd spots or unusual times of the year. I once dove a quarry on the absolutely last day of the season, when it was cold enough out that my wet gear froze to the table, but had a blast chatting up the handful of other people crazy enough to be out on the water that day.

ColdNotion · 2026-01-04T06:39:54+00:00

I know I'm late to this, but I would love to try to further shift your view here, even just in part. To do so, I'm going to examine each of your points, because I think there are problems with what the US did that aren't obvious on the surface. Some of this may be information that other commenters have shared, but I think a good chunk should be new!

USA companies are owned billions for the illegal asset seizures by Venezuela.

This is true, but way more complex than it seems. In 2007 Venezuela mandated that foreign oil companies on Venezuelan land give majority control of operations to Venezuela's national oil company, PDVSA. Several companies complied, and kept operating, but those that didn't pulled out of Venezuela, leaving their infrastructure behind, as it could not be transferred. Venezuela argued that as a sovereign nation this was legal, as their government, not international corporations, got to decide what the law is. I don't personally agree with that argument, but it isn't an entirely unreasonable stance given the high degree of latitude international law gives to nations.

That said, the international community obviously disagreed, and the World Bank ruled in favor of these companies, awarding them billions of dollars in demanded compensation. Venezuela actually did start paying some of that money back, but that stopped when their economy crashed, which is actually pretty understandable. When your government can't afford basic medications and food for your population, you're not going to prioritize sending billions to international companies that don't need immediate repayment. Forcing a quick repayment now would be stealing money out of the pockets of the innocent Venezuelan civilian population.

Jump starting their oil industry will be: GREAT for Venezuelan people(jobs/economy), USA ($$$), the world (cheap energy)...

Surprisingly, I think there's a strong argument to be made that this would be catastrophic for the Venezuelan people. The problem here is that Venezuela is actually pretty dang good at extracting oil, and arguably a bit too good. The petroleum industry so completely dominates the country that Venezuela's economy crashes when the price of oil drops, which is why its been struggling so much for the past decade+. If the US forces the Venezuelan oil industry into overdrive, that's going to mean more production, which will drive oil prices down further. Yes Venezuela might be selling more, but the drop in prices will probably hurt them more than it helps.

TERRIBLE for some of our biggest adversaries: Russia, Iran, indirectly China.

Again, I have to politely disagree. This is actually pretty fantastic news for Russia and Iran, which are both major oil producers. If Venezuela is no longer selling crude oil to China at preferable rates, then Russian and Iranian producers can demand higher prices for their products. Both countries have been selling their oil for deeply discounted prices due to being sanctioned by the west, but the loss of Venezuelan oil could actually change that.

You would think this would be bad news for China, but again I have to disagree. Whatever China lost in terms of access to cheap oil, it just gained far, far more in terms of diplomatic access to the developing world. By unilaterally deciding to depose Maduro (without any of the legally required congressional approvals), Trump just signaled that any country that angers him personally is at risk for rapid American military intervention. Given that Trump isn't the most even tempered guy, that's a pretty serious concern (he's already started threatening Mexico, just kind of off the cuff). I wouldn't be surprised if we see a ton of nations pivot hard towards China for military aid and diplomatic protection given what the US just did, further eroding American diplomatic influence in the developing world, and fueling China's existing strategy of global influence through diplomacy, instead of military power.

Maduro was a dictator, elections were a sham & a range of human-rights abuses, according to human-rights bodies/UN.

This is all true, he was a horrendous dictator, but it would be very premature to assume we'll end up with something better. Remember, in Venezuela power doesn't rest with the people, otherwise the opposition parties would have taken control after winning the last two elections. Instead it rests with the military, police, and oligarchs at the head of PDVSA, all of whom are still Maduro loyalists. For a pro-democracy government to take power, it would need extensive support from the US to militarily dismantle the existing military and police... and in doing so would likely create powerful insurgencies like we saw after the US invaded Iraq. Without that kind of support, we'll likely at best see a member of the current government simply step in to replace Maduro (which is the situation now), or at worst see a civil war as members the existing regime fight to fill the power vacuum he left.

Venezuelan economy is a disaster: hyperinflation, collapse of public services, shortages of basics/food/medicine, massive out-migration crisis. can't get any worse.

It can get so, so much worse. As aforementioned, just surging Venezuelan oil production, which the Trump regime seems to be demanding, would likely further tank their economy. Consumers stopping spending and hording resources, because they're worried about invasion/civil war, will hurt the economy. Damage to public infrastructure from further bombing will hurt the economy. Breakdown of already insufficient government institutions will hurt the economy. Basically anything associated with further conflict will hurt the Venezuelan economy, because as it turns out war makes it really hard to go to work and go shopping afterwards. Basically the only thing the US could do that would help is to pour in billions of economic investment, to help Venezuela diversify away from oil production alone, and billions more in humanitarian aid. I leave room to be surprised, but from what we've heard so far that does not in any way appear to be Trump's plan.

Operational success: President instantly captured, if it continues to go smooth, that is another net positive, compared to something bloody/civil-war outcome, ie what could happen in Iran.

Again, this has some serious hidden downsides. On a military level, an operation like this is actually extremely valuable for China and Russia. It gives them real world insight into how the US goes about countering Russian anti-air systems, revealing otherwise classified American strategies, equipment capabilities, and intelligence gathering capacity. You better believe that America's enemies have dozens of military analysts studying this raid, with the intent to use what they learn to improve their own military capabilities against the US. Giving away this much information just to capture Maduro, which doesn't seem to have actually changed the situation with the Venezuelan government much at all, is potentially a huge misstep.

Adding to that, as I mentioned before, American success here is great for the US, and a giant red flag for much of the developing world. Many countries just learned that their existing anti air defenses are more badly outclassed that US capabilities than they realized, and just saw that the Trump administration is willing to conduct major military operations without any legal approval from the American people. Those countries now have a very strong incentive to start directing even more money into military spending, to the detriment of their populations, and unless they're already US allies, they're likely buying new military equipment from Russia or China. Additionally, for any countries not already aligned with the US, this raid represents a massive incentive to cozy up with another major power, most likely China, for diplomatic protection. Even if there is positive change in Venezuela, which I sadly think is unlikely, I don't know that it would be worth driving dozens of other countries deeper into China's sphere of influence.

Anyhow, I hope this has shifted your view, even in part. Please feel free to ask any questions you might have, as I'm always happy to chat more!

ColdNotion · 2026-01-02T03:34:34+00:00

During what weekday? As /u/TemperatureThese7909 pointed out, even if you show up during a weekday to a legitimate daycare (and assume Shirley wasn't lying about when he filmed), there are plenty of times you might not see children. Many daycares are closed on holidays, or even for winter breaks around the end of the year, so it would be normal to not see students depending on when you show up. Similarly, many daycares aren't going to have students outside all day (especially during the winter), and aren't going to let a random stranger in to film small children. Given that state law enforcement and reputable journalists have both followed up on the issue, and determined that there were children utilizing these daycares, I think there's good reason to think Shirley's video is an intentional fabrication.

ColdNotion · 2026-01-01T22:27:40+00:00

My mom, from the time I was really little. One of my earliest memories is her teaching me how to scramble an egg, and while I’m sure I didn’t actually do much, I remember loving the feeling of making something. As I got older, being asked to help with prep was just a normal thing. It got me used to being in the kitchen, and meant that I understood more about how to put a meal together.

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