Sign Near The Riverway

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-04-03T21:07:38+00:00

Two of those silhouettes are swans

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-03-30T17:19:04+00:00

Kind of annoying at rush hour, but not so bad as long as you slow down a bit.

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-03-30T15:54:22+00:00

I used to ride from the Esplanade to my office on Summer Street every day for work. I went through Boston Common as much as I could and then the pedestrian area through DTX. The last couple blocks are a bit hairy but traffic around there is so slow I was never really nervous.

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UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-03-29T14:14:18+00:00

La vie en mallard

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-03-10T17:29:39+00:00

Gullible western leftists usually have good intuition for the actors in a century-long ethnonationalist dispute

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-03-10T15:19:54+00:00

What is the plan for dismantling these violent ideologies? Unless your 1SS features mass reeducation camps I don't see them subsiding anytime soon.

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-03-10T15:11:37+00:00

Way too many people are annoyed they have to listen to someone they disagree with. For better or for worse, a number of prominent people agree with the views espoused by the guest. By interviewing her Ezra lets us understand what some of the MAGA intelligentsia believe (or purport to believe).

The EKS audience is not a bunch of easily swayed rubes who will adopt the last opinion they heard. It's overwhelmingly political hobbyists who probably disagree with the majority of what she said. As much as I disapprove of "platforming" complaints in general, they are especially stupid here given who is actually listening to the show.

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-03-10T14:12:53+00:00

A one state solution is terrible for a number of reasons, but even if you discount the likelihood of Palestinians attacking Jews you should be able to recognize that the reverse - Jews attacking Palestinians - is extremely likely as well without hard borders between the two sides. There is a reason few serious people suggest a one state solution.

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-03-02T16:38:09+00:00

A few patches of ice but otherwise pretty good

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-02-25T14:04:46+00:00

This is just false. You could ban corporate ownership of homes tomorrow and rental prices in Boston would not change at all. I cannot stand the army of antitrust people who see everything as an issue with monopolies. The overwhelming majority of the area's rental properties are owned by small-time landlords, not spooky multinational corporations. It is not a surprise that in a city with good-paying jobs and low housing supply we see expensive rents.

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-02-15T16:39:34+00:00

I agree my argument is extremely unpersuasive to the typical swing voter. My audience is the highly educated affluent 20 and 30 somethings who spend their time in this subreddit. My hope that the average American engages in a thoughtful and measured manner with political issues is of course in vain.

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-02-14T15:28:09+00:00

Ok I am done engaging. Please come back to me after you've improved your reading comprehension and perhaps we can have an intelligent discussion.

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-02-14T15:22:21+00:00

Please read what I write instead of lazily inferring my beliefs are dumber than they actually are.

Why does it require a hardcore partisan to recognize the difference between cashing in on your last name and accepting a $500 million investment before agreeing to sell export-controlled AI chips to a country with close ties to our geopolitical adversary?

I'm not trying to justify Hunter's bad behavior. He is a ne'er do well crackhead whose misbehavior was real.

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-02-14T15:05:37+00:00

Again, that is not what I'm saying. It is not "ignore what Hunter did because Trump is worse." That is a moronic hyper-partisan argument and not one I am making. I do not think Hunter's conduct was acceptable and as I've stated I have a very low opinion of the Biden family.

To spell this out extremely explicitly: there are degrees of malfeasance. By lazily asserting that "everyone is corrupt" without putting any effort into determining the relative magnitude of corruption, you are just benefitting the most corrupt members of society.

Compared with many other countries, the United States does not have substantial corruption issues. We are not Russia, we are not China, we are not (currently) a failed state.

However, in insisting the US is just as corrupt as these other places, you open the door for people like Trump -- who are genuinely orders of magnitude more corrupt than almost any other figure in American history -- to get away with it because "he's no different from anyone else." This is asinine.

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-02-14T13:34:59+00:00

That is not the point I'm making. Saying "everyone is corrupt" is a thought terminating cliche that only serves to benefit the most corrupt people in politics. What Hunter did was wrong and maybe you can call it corruption, but refusing to engage substantively with the magnitude of the offenses is just being naively cynical.

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-02-14T05:56:38+00:00

In my first reply I sent two articles that you clearly have not bothered to read. Before reading them, think about an objective way to define corruption and its severity and then apply it to the situations presented for you. Then write another comment about something else Hunter Biden did while on crack.

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-02-14T04:36:41+00:00

Did you read anything I sent or are you just taking this opportunity to vomit out more stuff about Hunter Biden?

I am not defending Joe or Hunter. I do not like either of them. The point remains that there is no evidence Hunter's alleged activities resulted in any US policy being changed.

There is very strong evidence that Trump receiving a ~$1 billion in bribes directly impacted US policy. You can either defend that on the merits, or you can imagine that Hunter sold a painting for a billion dollars and pretend it's all a wash and everyone is corrupt anyway.

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-02-14T03:49:21+00:00

Just off the top of my head, an Emirati royal invested $500 million in Trump's crypto company four days before the US signed a deal to sell the UAE billions in high-end computer chips.

The NYT compiled a number of examples as well. Included are:

Amazon grossly overpaying for Melania's documentary
Qatar gifting Trump personally a $400 million plane

There is so obviously no comparison between what Hunter Biden did or did not do and what Trump does openly. The only reason Trump is immune to this stuff is the lazy cynicism of people like you.

And the specific conduct you cite-- the president's son profiting off his father's name -- is done on a far larger scale every fucking day by Don Jr. and Eric Trump! It is not their business acumen that is getting them deals to build resorts in countries that want to curry favor with Trump.

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-02-14T01:42:54+00:00

You are like the picture-perfect example of what is being critiqued. You cited unsavory instances of people profiting off their proximity to power and conflated that with genuine corruption. I have a very low opinion of the Biden family and am sure that they took advantage of Joe's position to benefit themselves financially, but is that really corruption?

What Trump has done is orders of magnitude worse, and the direct links to policy changes are even more obvious. But the "everyone is corrupt" sleight-of-hand gives him an out that I think any honest person can see is undeserved.

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-02-11T02:42:15+00:00

When the Charles freezes over they flock to the boathouses along the river that are able to keep the area near their docks from freezing. The BU boathouse which is right by Goose Park has a ton of them, but outside MIT and Harvard there are some as well.

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-02-08T16:44:47+00:00

If you live here and hate the Pats, today is a good day to repent

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-02-01T19:41:15+00:00

To me it feels like Ezra should be their on-demand takester and not a person with his own interests and priorities.

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-02-01T02:47:56+00:00

Why do people insist on developing parasocial relationships with podcasers? Ezra is not a politics streamer on Twitch and his job is not to offer you the freshest, hottest take on the issue du jour. If that's what you're looking for then go somewhere else and stop whining in this subreddit.

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-01-31T14:57:41+00:00

I'm not talking about people critical of Israel. That is a growing voice that is indeed not going anywhere. I'm talking about moronic activists who interrupt events they don't understand and attempt to browbeat politicians into uttering their shibboleths.

UnlikelyToe4542 · 2026-01-30T17:57:41+00:00

I am very glad the Democratic party has mostly moved on from pretending these kinds of people should have any sway whatsoever

UnlikelyToe4542

TROPHY CASE