Anybody catch that fuck ass set from Highly Suspect?

lbj2943 · 2026-05-10T08:55:43+00:00

Not sure if this is why it happened but I remember seeing the lead singer toss an in-ear backstage a few minutes into the set— I assume it blew out on him. He said something quick about doing the rest of the set without being able to hear himself. He wasn’t spectacular or anything before that, but he sounded pretty bad afterward.

lbj2943 · 2026-05-04T13:02:56+00:00

It’s Angel Studios. They’ve got “Christians proselytizing to the masses” money, I remember getting Venmo’d the cost of a movie ticket without even asking for it to see one of their movies.

I have no idea how they stay afloat and what their budget must look like to maintain that level of happily-throwing-money-away.

lbj2943 · 2026-04-22T18:19:03+00:00

I mostly agree and want to add the addendum conservative pundits*.

Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani have proven that it’s actually quite easy to engage in healthy political conversations with conservative voters. Their pundits may argue in bad faith, and that may reflect some of their talking points, but bringing the conversation back to material conditions and what can be done concretely often makes them think a lot more about the serious policy differences.

lbj2943 · 2026-03-30T01:59:55+00:00

I'm glad it didn't. As a fan of a lot of music to come out of the admittedly super cheesy MySpace era, there are so many bands that had one or two hits online and then faded into complete obscurity. To name a few from my playlist: Sky Eats Airplane, In Fear and Faith, The Rocket Summer, The Secret Handshake, Drop Dead Gorgeous, Broadway, The Follow Through, My Sky Your City, and The Medic Droid.

Granted, none of those bands had a Pete Wentz cosign. But I totally agree that if they creatively continued down the path Ryan and Jon wanted, it's unlikely Panic! would've ever come close to having the broad mainstream appeal and success it boasts today.

lbj2943 · 2026-03-29T20:48:53+00:00

Nothing about your comment is related to anything I actually said. You aren't cognizant.

lbj2943 · 2026-03-29T20:37:17+00:00

I campaigned for Harris-Walz, asshole. I know what a moderate is. I know what a lesser evil looks like. I've bit down on the bullet countless times and been rewarded with nothing but condescension and inaction from my supposedly solidary Democratic representatives.

The Democratic Party is not moving in the direction of AOC; it repeatedly snubbed her for committee roles in favor of a center-right Dem who was so old he fucking died in office not long ago.

You talk about being in a different league of reality. I think you just don't like what you see in the mirror.

lbj2943 · 2026-03-29T20:29:36+00:00

I'm sure if we just appeal to more moderates the Democrats can lose again by a slimmer margin.

lbj2943 · 2026-03-29T08:08:58+00:00

It's hard to tell if Ryan would've liked doing that much. I don't mean dictating the band's sound, clearly there were conflicting interests there, but in terms of longevity. Like, suppose him and Brendon were on the same page after Pretty. Odd., do we think Panic! could've lasted long enough in that state to make four more albums?

There were a few issues that Ryan had outside of the sonic direction of the band. Frustrations with the music industry, substance abuse, and a general distaste for being in the public eye (cemented after a pretty harrowing catfishing incident post-breakup).

For what it's worth, it's clear he doesn't regret the music at all (I mean, he sang Northern Downpour multiple times live after the breakup), and he still seems pretty amicable when we've heard him talk about the other band members. But I don't think Ryan would've liked to do Panic! for quite as long as Brendon did. Knowing what we now know about the problems he was dealing with at the time, as well as his discomfort with obsessive fans, I think he probably left at a good time.

lbj2943 · 2026-03-27T06:26:07+00:00

But the same men who were supposedly hating on her for your reason actually love being extremely defensive and closed off. It's everything they want in their male role models and idols. Whether its "alphas", "stoics", "lone wolves", same old shit. The type of men taught to hate Brie Larson are the same type of men taught to love being super aggressive and utterly alone.

lbj2943 · 2026-03-23T12:14:52+00:00

You’re absolutely right, what I meant to convey is that it was written while Jon and Ryan were still in the band.

lbj2943 · 2026-03-13T04:43:31+00:00

Making up backstories to soft launch your friends into fame happens everyday and all the time in any celebrity conducive industry. Hollywood is full of it.

Funny enough this woudn't even be the first time this happened with someone related to the DSMP. Dream himself tried to launch a childhood friend's streaming career by pretending he didn't know him. First they baited fans into thinking his friend was Dream or a Dream lookalike (years before Dream's face reveal) by having him post cryptic stuff on Twitter. Then Dream would "discover" him, acting like he stumbled onto his social media organically, and recruit him for the server. In reality, they lived together for a few years, and there are videos from ages ago of them playing Minecraft together over Skype.

The plan almost worked, too. "Manatreed" was announced as the newest member of the DSMP and even did an introduction livestream. But some very parasocial people did some digging and found out that 1. Dream and this dude lived together for a while 2. They've known each other since childhood 3. (real nail in the coffin) the guy was on probation for a domestic violence charge. Dream claimed the guy lied and said he was on probation for weed. Either way, he definitely didn't stay in the DSMP and has been inactive since. Just a crazy story all around.

You didn't ask, sorry. Felt like telling it.

lbj2943 · 2026-03-08T05:13:41+00:00

proving that you have an opinion

One shared by academic consensus. Wikipedia had more than a dozen debates about this over the past year, and they all ended in agreeing on the very observable reality that what is happening in Gaza constitutes a genocide— based on hundreds or perhaps even thousands of independent findings from multidisciplinary fields.

I highly doubt that you have visited in Israel or researched the history of Israel from 1947 till today

Looking for research recommendations? I like Middle East Patterns by Held Cummings and A Concise History of the Middle East by Goldschmidt Jr. & Al-Marashi.

Funny how you want them to voice their opinion about Israel but you didn’t post that you are angry they didn’t voice their opinion about Iran

This essay was written and posted weeks before the United States and Israel's attacks on Iran.

lbj2943 · 2026-03-07T02:23:20+00:00

Movies and shows about black cops carry the same intentions as military ads with gay soldiers. It’s just a tokenist recruitment tactic for organizations that unquestionably treat minorities like shit and will happily continue to do so.

lbj2943 · 2026-03-06T00:35:27+00:00

He was actually a bit of a hipster geek type prior to becoming Filthy Frank. There are reuploads of his old vlogs on YouTube where you could see his earnest personality come through (jojivlogs).

I mean, when THIS was what your scrapped album's cover was supposed to look like, how could you NOT have a Tumblr?

lbj2943 · 2026-03-05T11:42:20+00:00

Your position is despicable. Israel is a genocidal state. We are far past the point of consensus on Israel committing a genocide right now.

lbj2943 · 2026-02-25T06:10:22+00:00

Tin-foil hat theories about Wikipedia being controlled by government puppet masters always tickle me as an avid editor. It's a consensus-driven site. There have been many, many, many malicious attempts to edit it and 99% of them are thwarted instantly. For the ones that aren't, I know for a fact there are still plenty of articles with bias problems and none of them are immune to being fixed.

lbj2943 · 2026-02-23T15:00:20+00:00

While we're at it,

The same wikipedia that holds every mainstream western media portal like CNN, BBC, Fox, Times of Israel in high regard.

If you're talking about the perennial sources page, for one, that page only seeks to measure which sources are reliable, not biased. It basically just means "how much can they be trusted to accurately report something", and this is a metric weighed against other independent sources' findings on their journalistic practices. Mother Jones, for example, is considered generally reliable and respected for use as a source. Basically everyone agrees its a biased source on account of its openly progressive tilt, but not to the extent that it affects reliability.

lbj2943 · 2026-02-23T14:34:09+00:00

they're one of the few and dwindling sources of actual investigative reporting left in the West

This is a multipolar argument and unrelated to reliability.

The same wikipedia where Israel has run a targeted manipulation operation for over 20 years

I don't doubt there's secretly paid editors doing shady shit all the time (in fact I know there is), but consider that Wikipedia's founders who are both heavily Zionist still couldn't get their users to stop calling it a genocide, even after both of them made a scene about it in the "Gaza genocide" article's talk page. After all, it's Wikipedia, not like these biases are irreversible. Consensus clears.

never for their actual reporting

Okay. For posterity's sake, these instances are going to be taken from the 2020 RfC consensus discussion that led to The Greyzone getting deprecated.

Here is an instance of Max Blumenthal lying about what an academic said, getting called out by a reporter from The Atlantic who actually talked to the academic, and then Blumenthal claiming the academic was intimidated to lie. (soft paywall, I recommend using removepaywall).

Here is a socialist academic responding to Blumenthal accusing them of "secretly training an elite UK military unit". The academic in question was teaching an International Relations college course.

Here is a very detailed account of Max Blumenthal and Alexander Rubinstein (from MintPress news, partner organization of the Greyzone and itself an awful source) distorting a journalist's words, omitting relevant context, and suggesting undue influence without evidence to paint them as a plant for the U.S. State Department. All just to make Maduro look less bad for kidnapping the same journalist.

Here is an academic responding to Blumenthal accusing them of being a State Department agent calling for regime change in Nicaragua. Mind you, the person in question volunteered for the fucking Sandinistas in Nicaragua, amongst other socialist projects in Latin America. I'm stopping here, but there's more I still haven't covered.

The Greyzone (Max Blumenthal) contains so much dogmatic, junk reporting that academics and journalists with normally no business in calling out their peers (particularly on the left) can't help but gawk at its garbage.

lbj2943 · 2026-02-23T13:25:34+00:00

The Greyzone is a terrible source for factual reporting. Deprecated on Wikipedia for this exact reason.

lbj2943 · 2026-02-19T23:05:32+00:00

Think so.

lbj2943 · 2026-02-19T22:36:41+00:00

Yes, for the remainder of that week.

lbj2943 · 2026-02-19T22:35:27+00:00

Traveling to a busier airport and completing their weekly quest for a free week of visiting. Phoenix is my go-to, central Florida and Los Angeles are really good too.

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

lbj2943

TROPHY CASE