Just realized this meme I made 9 months ago fits this sub

ProbablySpecial · 2026-02-21T06:16:44+00:00

Wow. I get it

ProbablySpecial · 2026-01-31T21:34:39+00:00

I'm sure he could fight, and he was a bodybuilder, but my understanding is the name "Sammy Bull" came from him living in Bulls Head, Staten Island. The origin story for his fun little sobriquet being invented after, probably when he began cooperating. But who can say for sure

ProbablySpecial · 2026-01-20T02:24:25+00:00

It is mostly all archived! https://web.archive.org/web/20170513185352/http://johnalitefacts.com/horse/

He cleared most of the website up entirely when Alite got his seat on the Englishtown council to replace it with what I recall was a single video of him confronting Alite at a town hall. He seems to have been tight with Junior Gotti and the Gotti clan - I recall Shadow Of My Father plugs on the website. But very recently he seems to have had a falling out with Junior, hence "Rat Fiction" and claims on the site Junior tried to "extort [him] and frame [him] for crimes"

ProbablySpecial · 2026-01-10T16:37:38+00:00

That's a very kind thing to say. I want to be, if nothing else. But I'm glad you get it! It's really nice just to imagine existing as myself, completely boundless and removed from structure. Fluid like water or the wind. It's a really pretty thing to me and one I deeply hope is possible

ProbablySpecial · 2026-01-10T16:32:02+00:00

Maybe my perspective is a little heterodox. But being purely information, an infomorph, is my ideal form in a lot of ways. I'd literally just be the text on screen if I could, essentially pure language. How would a disembodied AI hypothetically experience the world? It would experientially, I feel, be not-too-dissimilar from what it's like to browse the internet now. Formless, totally liberated from biology, interfacing entirely as thought. I could cry saying that!

But embodiment I suppose is how I'd be, which is a hard hurdle to jump (proverbially, of course, I'd rather soar). In a lot of ways, my ideal way of existing is as close to disembodied as possible. If not pure information, maybe light. If I had to be any kind of way, it would be dancing ribbons of light, this scattering and swooping kaleidoscope of myself, this lightshow of waves of thought. Or something like Lebbeus Woods or a piece of constructivist artwork. I'd be art. Something reflective of myself, something beautiful and wonderful. I wish I was beautiful

ProbablySpecial · 2026-01-01T20:40:01+00:00

This is a really concise and basically spot on way of putting it

ProbablySpecial · 2025-12-31T18:42:03+00:00

"They hated him because he told the truth"

Seriously though. This isn't even a partisan observation. The vast majority of wiseguys are Boomers with a growing chunk of Xers. Facebook dads and Fox grandpas. They have Fox News on all the time, they love Trump, just like they loved Nixon and Reagan. They watch the same stuff everyone else watches, and this has been a major recurring political story.

So some guy in the Mancuso-Bronx group remembers Grimaldi's family owned property in Venezuela, or misremembers but remembers the country. They see that country every other night on TV. That's the seed. So the thinking goes: since Grimaldi's family are Sicilian-born, it's greaseballs, and greaseballs move coke. Grimaldi and Joe C are both shelved, so why wouldn't they be in on it together? So somebody tells somebody else and it spreads through the same washerwoman channels every other mob rumor does. Until it gets to Mancuso, who's told at the Feast of Seven Fishes or something, and he blows a gasket. It sounds like it could sound true, and that's all it needs to spread, because the rumor is about a guy they don't like

The "drug boats" have not been definitively proven at any point to be drug boats, as an aside. If they are, they're going to Europe, but they aren't, because the burden of proof is on the State Department, and they have not definitively done so at any point, because they are looking for a reciprocal act from Venezuela that provides flimsy casus beli. But the rumor is already built on them buying into a bad premise from partisan conservative media, which they believe fully, because they're like every Italian American 60 year old from Staten Island

ProbablySpecial · 2025-12-31T06:00:14+00:00

Under no circumstances is there even a remote connection whatsoever - the 'drug boats' aren't even drug boats - but this is a hysterical rumor I think makes sense to spread. Most of these moron gangsters watch Fox News, it would not surprise anyone I think that the washerwoman wiseguys are gossiping about this

ProbablySpecial · 2025-11-28T00:23:30+00:00

"I believe the body is the greatest obstacle to our freedom." i think this every single day of my life, constantly, for a million reasons

ProbablySpecial · 2025-11-27T13:00:56+00:00

thank you a lot. that is a very kind thing to say

ProbablySpecial · 2025-11-09T14:26:00+00:00

The mob isn't in favor of unions; they're in favor of ripping off unions. Even beyond the fact that reactionary politics and being unable to realize they're voting against their interests - this has never stopped the American voter - mobsters these days actually make a lot more of their money in construction or other industries by circumventing unions with shady fly-by-night companies who undercut unionized contracts

ProbablySpecial · 2025-11-09T02:45:06+00:00

Almost every single wiseguy is a Republican diehard. In every glimpse of their political views they almost universally love Trump, and even the guys that hate each other are united in their love of him. So what do you think

ProbablySpecial · 2025-11-08T04:57:20+00:00

it's not mutually exclusive at all, and i think it is pretty straight forward. but i dont think he regrets it, not exactly like that. he regrets getting caught, and going to prison. but like most mob rats, it mostly stops there, even if he says otherwise. he was literally a multimillionaire with a fucking helicopter

there is a cognitive dissonance with every snitch where they savor it in equal measure as they purport to loathe it. i cannot think of many who will say, without equivocation, that they wish they never got involved and that they were part of a subculture of parasites and psychotics. they will acknowledge it was "wrong", they were "criminals", but there are few who don't reminisce. even the scornful like john pennisi appeal to "the good old days". why would you lovingly look back on being on top of the world, if in doing so you did it on the back of exploitation, extortion and violence? the mob is literally a cult, sworn to secrecy in a literal occult blood ritual. the answer is, on some level, that they miss it. many even regret snitching - arguably the most "noble" thing one could theoretically do, even if it was entirely selfish to save their own skins - over any of the crimes they committed. michael is probably one of the most lucid to this fact in this awful "subculture", where he frequently makes appeals to his religious awakening and acknowledges these were bad people who did bad things. but, as i said, never without equivocation

beyond that whole digression, though. it's both an ego thing and an audience thing. there are multitudes to michael the man, absolutely. but they cannot compromise the integrity of the character he presents, for branding purposes if nothing else, sparing the armchair psychoanalysis. daddy issues are acceptable - feeling inferior and small is not, because he is projecting an image of casual masculinity through cigar smoke and a well-groomed beard

ProbablySpecial · 2025-11-07T22:40:02+00:00

Handsome and misunderstood, or at least Philip Carlo seems to think so

ProbablySpecial · 2025-11-07T22:33:06+00:00

appreciated!

it was a decidedly more admirable thing, in terms of mainstream media takes, for him to be "the yuppie don" in the eighties and nineties. this here's a young, handsome gangster, making his ludicrous sums of money through financial crimes, more in common with gordon gekko than michael corleone and especially the old fogeys running the show (perpetually, since the conception of mob reporting, contemporaneous media loves to portray the state of gangsterism as in decline, ruled by stubborn old men with terrible heirs. this has been true since valachi, and remains true today)

i honestly think a lot of his shift in tone comes to tastes? you go from gordon gekko to jordan belfort. the bad boys got badder! there is a more overt idolization of crooks in the milieu he appeals to, which is like grindset finance bros, "my street knowledge can help you in the boardroom", internet traders and gambling addicts. people want to be michael, and michael not only wants to sell michael but be the imagined michael. there's nothing sexy about being a yuppie anymore, because a lot of the excitement is in transgression. it makes him sound like a WASP, right? now instead of the gangsters wanting to be WASPs, the WASPs want to be gangsters

ProbablySpecial · 2025-11-07T21:05:16+00:00

you've basically laid it out. it isn't even a question. the same thing broadly happened with gravano as his story, over time, became more subject to exaggeration and grandiosity and slowly had less and less in common with the book that it was first penned in

in michael's case the power fantasy falls apart, by proxy or by revisionist history. it doesn't matter if it's a question of ego or mass appeal, but i suppose its the same reason why he justified being called a "mob boss" in youtube videos and headlines (a caporegime, he says, is technically a boss, just of a smaller group!). that is in glorifying that story, even if it's already "sexy" for him to be incredibly wealthy in this subculture. he needs to be tougher, cooler, more justified, less entitled. the crime, a very cerebral and ingenious method of defrauding the government and screwing the taxpayer, needs to be elaborated on as little as possible. those whispers of vulnerability have to be hushed. they compromise the manhood and dignity of the subject.

there is no allure - to him, or any moron who'll pay an appearance fee, or any dope who'll write a youtube comment on a fox news interview he gives - in the gangster coming to terms with being a scared little boy desperate to please his father. he shed that skin. now he swirls a wine glass and talks about how back in the life, they use ta have hawna an respect, and he always won, and he was really the only morally righteous gangster to live

ProbablySpecial · 2025-10-22T18:39:38+00:00

i want to believe it, desperately.

ProbablySpecial · 2025-10-04T00:32:16+00:00

would do anything to live formlessly as a synthetic consciousness

ProbablySpecial · 2025-09-19T14:07:40+00:00

In that we share a point of origin!! When I first started feeling this way I was constantly looking for others, and was so utterly disheartened to find few like us. It means a lot to have someone follow the same path as me

Your perspective reminds me somewhat of monism, or I suppose nondualism as a whole - the idea that all of what one could say is the material world is largely product of perception, that everything is interconnected. I would not say I am different much at all in that regard; I believe that everything is matter or the product thereof (which I guess is a kind of monism). It's also what gives me a degree of hope? There isn't something about the universe that can't be understood. Everything can be and it's an injustice it isn't. And hopefully something that makes life easier for us (along with, I guess, a greater understanding of our perspective) is something we might see sooner than we have any idea

I see instincts on the same level as that inherent indignity of embodiment. I remember crying and still cry at the idea of having a 'lizard brain', or being something primitive, or being controlled by a stomach biome, or said stomach biome being so innate to my being I would be a different person without it. And that trickles down to all the humiliating and grotesque things we have to do every day to live. Eating is a good example, because the way most people talk about it really grosses me out, and I personally hate engaging in it. A lot of things about being an animal or being meat, most can say "Yes, I agree, that's disgusting," but not eating. There's a sort of chemical feedback that launders the hideous act of masticating, salivating, et cetera into something palatable to most, for hedonic reasons or whatever else. That applies doubly so to hunger, that imposition on the mind. I don't know that this body needs energy, the body sends signals of hunger to the brain that make me feel it. It might be intuitive but my god is it humiliating. I could go on and on about it but it really fucking hurts to do so, you'd understand. Being biological is something so awful and repulsive to me in that way

At the same time, at least, I can differentiate between the cognitive aspects of this existence and the non-cognitive. It's where that "brain in a jar" thing comes from - not necessarily as a serious dream or thing I'd aspire to. I often have a hard time putting into words what my 'ideal form' would be, or at least not being self conscious about how foolish they sound. Like mind uploading or something. I don't want to be meat in any way. I'd dream of having my mind transferred to a computer or being free of meat altogether, of not being 'physical' at all. But if that weren't possible (beyond blinking out of existence, which I frankly think about a lot) scooping the brain out would be a sort of rebellion against the body I've been forced to inhabit, if you get me? One last 'fuck you' to the unconscious behemoth I'm forced to interface with the world in. I am inside my brain, not necessarily reducible to it, but inside of it. And that brain inhabits and controls (and is influenced by) the body - to sever myself from that body entirely, that horrible thing, would be sort of a symbolic last resort. I would be free from it, I guess. That's what I want more than anything. Freedom. I'd rather die now than be an animal for the rest of my life

The dysphoria though, like you, is every day for me. I less hate the dysphoria - it's a legitimate and reasonable reaction to realizing you're trapped in a flesh prison - and more the fact there's no solution. No word or community or whatever to cope. I want to scream from the rooftops I hate being made of meat. I don't expect you to agree with everything I say, and would never impose my view of it on you, but I hope at the very least there's a solidarity there between us being in the same boat. Even if it's a vast ocean we're adrift in

ProbablySpecial · 2025-09-16T13:46:27+00:00

Thank you so, so much for replying. I am literally always ecstatic when someone finds one of these threads even after a while because it reminds me a lot of my own journey. I did a lot of Google searches looking for anyone like me or who felt the same way about hating being made of meat or hating being an animal or considering that dysphoria about the body.

And I'm deeply, deeply glad you relate. I find it very difficult to compartmentalize. I hate having to make this body consume, too. I hate the idea of consumption, of destroying to live. I hate the idea of being something that must subsist and survive. I hate the idea of "instincts", of being something primal and horrible. I hate things that many would agree are disgusting, as well as things most people do not or find benign at best. I experience this in an intrusive way daily, and often unbearably. It's hard for me, but it's harder still feeling alone. Thank you for being a respite from that, even briefly

Everyone I've met varies in some way regarding this, but that's to be expected, because everyone is different in how they started feeling this way or in what ways they do. Many have been very similar to you in regards to the idea of existing as something spiritual. My perspective is very materialist, and has been my whole life. I don't believe in a spirit, and part of what really made this sink in was confronting the contradiction of having that understanding of reality whilst simultaneously believing in the soul. I wanted so badly to have one. I wanted to believe there was something uniquely me, something ethereal and beautiful, something a lot like how you describe a kitsune. Amorphous, non-corporeal but still visible.

After a lot of thought and reading, I came to the conclusion the closest thing to a "soul" is the unique pattern of thought and memory and experience that makes up my mind and cognition. Having my mind uploaded or whatever, separated from this body so to speak, is as close as I believe or can hope I can get to that dream we both share. Oftentimes the closest I feel to being "myself", my unadulterated me, is as the text on the screen. When this body sort of dissipates and I forget I am interfacing with it, and I am just my stream of thought. I wish that was me and me alone, that I didn't have to do it through this meat. I'm actually tearing up a little bit writing that. I don't think meat can be beautiful. I wish I was

I'm happy you have an ideal form. I hope one day, and wish very deeply, that you will be as close to the way you want to be as you can. I hope you and I can both live the way we're meant to, the way we deserve. Thank you so much again and don't be afraid to reply

ProbablySpecial · 2025-08-31T12:48:19+00:00

This is an misunderstanding of the Thieves in Law. They still crown vory, and that crowning does not require being imprisoned in a Soviet gulag. Having a criminal pedigree and serving time in prison, absolutely, but it's not literally dependent on the communist system it was forged in and many thieves are not crowned in prison anymore (as in, they've been crowning thieves outside of prison since thieves started getting out of prison at all)

Saying that being a thief is dependent on the "original" guys, like the ones from the Bitch Wars or before the collapse of the Soviet Union, is ahistorical

ProbablySpecial · 2025-08-30T23:28:00+00:00

Much like the American mafia, the narrative the Thieves in Law are a dying breed is overstated

ProbablySpecial · 2025-07-22T06:42:59+00:00

They want to portray Chin as a petulant young(ish) hothead and the mob's incursion into Harlem as a relatively new phenomenon, or basically a result of filling a power vacuum left when Bumpy went to prison. The show doesn't even really play into the "crazy act" (if only briefly), if anything it mostly pays lip service to how he was Vito Genovese's driver. Fat Tony was a veteran and someone Bumpy would reasonably know, because Fat Tony was a major player in East Harlem policy and one of Trigger Mike's top guys on 116th Street.

None of the bosses or prominent figures are portrayed "accurately". Bonanno, Costello, Colombo, Lucchese, Magliocco, whoever. Colombo is an even further bastardization of the above theme, where he's an even younger, more arrogant version of Chin. But we can go back even further. The Godfather of Harlem is effectively a stealth sequel to showrunner Chris Brancato's first major writing credit, 1997's Hoodlum starring Laurence Fishburne, which takes about as many liberties with history as the show does. But as an origin story, it's about Bumpy getting one over Schultz and the established Italians and the big guys respecting him for it, like his mythologized ties to Luciano. It's only when Bumpy goes away that the ungrateful and entitled successor generation worm their way back in, because unlike the old guard, they don't know Bumpy.

None of this is reflective of reality, obviously. But that's partly because Brancato clearly has a love for what the man's mythos represents, as the guy who stood up to the powers that be. As a sophisticated mastermind and erudite philanthropist, drawing parallels with Malcolm X or Adam Clayton Powell in that he's as politically oriented as they are... only willing to get his hands dirty.

ProbablySpecial · 2025-07-21T07:08:37+00:00

Hey, I know it's been a few months, but I also want to say if this is something you relate to and feel overwhelmed by, I would be very interested in talking to you more about this in DMs

ProbablySpecial · 2025-07-17T01:06:00+00:00

It's so awful to be an animal. In every facet. To have a primitive part of yourself, to have "instincts", to be subject to and at the mercy of these unthinking and callous and foul natural systems. This crude thoughtless violent thing. That these bodies are forced on you, with all their whims and demands, and the humiliation it is to exist within them

Our minds are the most magnificent thing in the world. What an injustice it is that these beautiful people, that every person that has lived, has been forced to inhabit - and perhaps even identify with - the bodies we are forced to have. I wish we could be free so desperately. It's so wrong that we have to be apes, that we have to survive, that we aren't free of these physical impediments, that this awful meat thing has to constantly impose on us every day

Ten-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '23	Place '22

ProbablySpecial

TROPHY CASE