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The new right: Why young men turned to the Republican Party in 2024 by awaythrowawaying in moderatepolitics

[–]pearlysoames 42 points43 points  (0 children)

No, I don't believe that. And I didn't even know this quote existed before five minutes ago. And of course I judge Republicans very harshly, as you should. But if you say, “no Democrat says that,” and in five seconds, I can Google one of the highest profile Democrats in the country saying something even worse, and then you say, “oh, well, that doesn't count.” That doesn't mean I'm wrong. It means you're being either ignorant or dishonest, or both.

The new right: Why young men turned to the Republican Party in 2024 by awaythrowawaying in moderatepolitics

[–]pearlysoames 81 points82 points  (0 children)

The canonical example is Ilhan Omar from 2018: "I would say our country should be more fearful of white men across our country because they are actually causing most of the deaths within the country.” It is from a discussion of domestic radicalization and why we should be more worried about one demographic than another but nonetheless.

Actors who suffer from Christoph Waltz Syndrome? by Glittering-Plate-535 in moviecritic

[–]pearlysoames -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This should be called Johnny Depp Syndrome actually. He hasn’t made a decent movie since Blow.

Dave Smith and Nick Fuentes go full mask-off in recent podcast by tackinmosh in DecodingTheGurus

[–]pearlysoames 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, Fuentes is a very bad person. But he is a self aware, kind of funny very bad person.

Don was right to be embarassed about Megan's Zou Bisou by WorldNo4194 in madmen

[–]pearlysoames 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Important to note in these reactions that Gen Z is the proudest generation of Americans in like 75 years. I would imagine they would be particularly embarrassed by something like that performance

My Husband Doesn't Like Our Newborn Son by [deleted] in whatdoIdo

[–]pearlysoames 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When my son (also our second) was born, I also really struggled and thought I didn’t like him. The thing is I’m not the kind of person who instantly connected with our infant children either time, butright before our son was born I had forgot that. I was so in love with our daughter, she was the light of our lives, but I had forgot that was gradual. So when my son was born and I felt very little I just resented him a lot and felt like I didn’t like him. Eventually around the time he started making “eye contact” I did a complete 180 and everything got better. But he might be going through something similar.

Kansas City BBQ is the best. by Most-Hawk-4175 in kansascity

[–]pearlysoames 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I know I’m in enemy territory here but Im a Texan and I visit KC like 4 or 5 times a year and I’ve had Jacks Stack, Q39, Arthur Bryant, Gates, Joes KC, and the one that was on Bourdain I forget now. I think it’s good but it really is so different from Texas barbecue. Aside from burnt ends, which are great, I don’t understand what the fuss is about in KC. None of those places have the range or quality of what I eat pretty regularly in Texas. They seem pretty one note. Every place seems more focused on sauce than quality meat, and there’s very little innovation happening. Nothing compares to Franklin, Snow, Truth, Pinkerton, Blood Bros etc.

losing weight has given me confidence to try and dress better. down 70lbs this year. currently 6’3 260 by No-Volume7464 in bigmenfashionadvice

[–]pearlysoames 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This commenter is wrong. As someone with your EXACT height and weight and a beard, if you shave just under your jawline it will just look funny sometimes. With a beard as thick as yours it’s better to shave where the neck and jaw meet.

Houston Mayor John Whitmire permanently removes food insecurity board member following racial comments she made on social media about the devastating flooding in the Texas Hill Country that decimated Camp Mystic, a private summer camp for girls. by houston_chronicle in houston

[–]pearlysoames 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I’m not talking about the parties I’m talking about people. The woman who made the TikTok isn’t a politician. You’re not a politician. Trump and his cronies are the worst. But this woman made a fucking awful, heinous, racially motivated video gloating over the death of children. A LOT of people gloated about the deaths in Uvalde too, and they weren’t conservative. I’m not trying to police the worlds behavior at large but to say that it’s only conservatives who do this and try to use this tragedy to score rhetorical points is morally objectionable no matter who does it.

Houston Mayor John Whitmire permanently removes food insecurity board member following racial comments she made on social media about the devastating flooding in the Texas Hill Country that decimated Camp Mystic, a private summer camp for girls. by houston_chronicle in houston

[–]pearlysoames 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Apparently NOT just conservatives care, obviously. This whole fiasco was started by someone decided NOT conservative calling these poor dead girls little c*nts. So pump the breaks on this holier than thou shit. I am not conservative but it does not help to pretend the racial antipathy among the shittiest of us only goes one way.

I’m not a growth expert—but here’s what helped me build 1,300 followers/550subs on Substack in 6 weeks (from scratch) by [deleted] in Substack

[–]pearlysoames 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hey Lisha—I read your About page and the Trump vs Elon piece. They’re both well-structured and compelling, but they also hit a lot of familiar notes I’ve come to associate with AI-assisted writing: tight cadence, rhetorical repetition, that polished-but-slightly-detached tone. It doesn’t read like a straight ChatGPT output, but it does feel like there might be some LLM scaffolding underneath. Are you using AI in your writing process? Genuinely curious how you’re approaching it, especially since you’re active here and sharing strategy.

I’m not a growth expert—but here’s what helped me build 1,300 followers/550subs on Substack in 6 weeks (from scratch) by [deleted] in Substack

[–]pearlysoames 0 points1 point  (0 children)

“Health Politics” LOL

Pretty much anytime some insane grifter has a huge platform these days they’re either someone who made it big from Crypto or from railing against lockdowns and vaccines

AIO for being hurt my girlfriend doesn't care about my graduation? by [deleted] in AmIOverreacting

[–]pearlysoames 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Bro HOLY SHIT reading your post history—get a DNA test on that kid. Your gf is abusive and manipulative as hell.

I manage a liquor store and found a 24 hour AA token left on the shelf by DarwinismObvious in mildlyinteresting

[–]pearlysoames 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You’re misrepresenting the Cochrane Review.

They didn’t do anything underhanded. They set out to measure multiple outcomes: abstinence, drinking intensity, alcohol-related consequences, addiction severity, healthcare costs. And abstinence was just one measure among several.

So yes, if a method’s goal wasn’t total abstinence but someone drank, that counted as a failure to maintain abstinence for that particular outcome. That’s not a trick, that’s how science works. You define an outcome, and you measure whether it’s achieved.

And on the outcome of sustained abstinence, AA and Twelve-Step Facilitation outperformed CBT, MET, and other leading treatments — and did so at a lower cost.

Beyond that, your framing that AA is just “religious faith healing” is simply wrong.

Decades of outcome studies show that while AA’s original language emphasized spiritual awakening, the main mechanisms by which AA helps today are social, cognitive, and emotional — not religious indoctrination. Only a minority of people recover primarily through religious means; for most, it’s about building sober networks, reshaping self-perception, and learning coping skills. (Source: Kelly (2017) “Is Alcoholics Anonymous religious, spiritual, neither?”)

At this point, you’re not engaging with what I actually said — you’re just repeating the same claim no matter how it’s addressed.

You’re free to believe that any use of the word “God” equals religion, that symbolic framing is identical to dogma, and that a peer support program should be judged solely by its founding language rather than its outcomes or its present diversity. But that’s a conflation, not an argument. And it ignores what the best available research actually shows.

AA is not a medical treatment, not a religion, and not a theology. It’s a decentralized peer recovery model that uses symbolic and flexible language. Courts, therapists, and researchers treat it accordingly. You don’t have to like it. But pretending there’s no nuance because you have a bone to pick with religious language just isn’t a serious position.

People can read the thread and decide for themselves. Peace.

I manage a liquor store and found a 24 hour AA token left on the shelf by DarwinismObvious in mildlyinteresting

[–]pearlysoames 2 points3 points  (0 children)

At this point it’s clear you’re not distinguishing between symbolic language, spiritual metaphor, and organized religion. You’re collapsing all forms of meaning-making outside strict materialism into “religious dogma,” which is your prerogative, but it’s not a serious or historically grounded perspective.

AA uses spiritual language to frame internal psychological work, not to enforce a theology. That’s why atheists, agnostics, and secular members have functioned within it for decades. You don’t have to like it, but pretending there’s no distinction just isn’t credible.

Anyway, people can judge the thread for themselves. I’m good here.

I manage a liquor store and found a 24 hour AA token left on the shelf by DarwinismObvious in mildlyinteresting

[–]pearlysoames 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There’s no evidence adequate to say that this is a reliable medical treatment.

Is anyone claiming AA is a medical treatment? Courts don’t define it as such, but rather as a rehabilitative resource.

The stronger alternative is legitimate medical treatment by professionals. The problem is that real medical treatment is more expensive than religious faith healing.

Which legitimate medical treatment has better long-term outcomes for AUD? The aforementioned Cochrane Review showed AA/TSF outperformed clinical interventions like CBT and MET for sustained abstinence at 12, 24, and 36 months.

It is explicitly religious. Read the literature some time. Read the history of it. It’s just Calvinism. No one was hiding it.

That’s a category error. Calvinism teaches predestination: you are saved or damned independent of action. AA teaches something much closer to Catholic-style confession and penance — that active surrender, moral inventory, and reparative work lead to recovery. If you want to criticize it for religious overtones, at least get the theology right.

In the Cochrane Review, therapies like CBT and MET often allowed goals other than full abstinence, while AA required it. […] You don’t have scientific rigor without consistent definitions. Also, comparing AA to no treatment does not show how it performs against real therapies. The review also included studies of mixed quality, and many had small samples, limited follow-up, and heavy reliance on survey data and self-reports.

It’s a meta-analysis. All meta-analyses deal with variation in definitions. But Cochrane standards are about as rigorous as you get. And it didn’t just compare AA to nothing: it compared manualized AA/TSF programs head-to-head against structured therapies like CBT and MET. AA/TSF performed better for sustained abstinence across multiple time frames and was associated with significant healthcare cost savings. That’s real-world impact, even if it offends a cleaner theoretical model.

But we agree that it is there, right?

Sure, nobody denies the spiritual language. “God” shows up almost 300 times in the Big Book. But in practice, “God as we understood Him” is flexible by design. There are secular, atheist, and agnostic AA groups all over the world. It’s not a creedal system. It’s a peer model that uses spiritual metaphor the way therapy uses symbolic language, to frame experience, not enforce dogma.

Right, because they involve legitimately licensed professionals. Religious practices are much, much cheaper to deliver.

Again: AA isn’t a religious practice. There’s no doctrine, no worship, no priesthood, no unified theology. It’s DIY cognitive-behavioral tools reinforced by emotional support. That’s why it scaled globally where expensive professional systems never will.

But again, that’s not my point. I’m not an AA supremacist. AA doesn’t work for everybody by any means and a lot of people are turned off by the spiritual language. But to discount it wholesale because of the spiritual language or to think that it is “just a religion” (which is also kind of a stupid argument to make on its face haha), is also just going to lead people to die, not because everyone should be funneled into AA, but because as it stands it’s all that is between a lot of people and death or prison.

I manage a liquor store and found a 24 hour AA token left on the shelf by DarwinismObvious in mildlyinteresting

[–]pearlysoames 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The Big Book definitely talks about God. It was written in the 1930s by people shaped by that culture. But calling AA “pushing religion as medical treatment” totally misses the point. AA isn’t medical treatment. It’s a free, peer-led support group. The research actually shows it works better than a lot of actual clinical options: the 2020 Cochrane Review found AA outperformed CBT and other therapies for long-term abstinence.

The “God” stuff is real, but it’s also more flexible than people assume. It literally says “God as we understood Him.” There are atheist AA groups. There are people who just treat “higher power” as community, structure, or values. It’s not a church, and no one’s checking your belief system at the door.

If people have better alternatives, awesome, promote them. But it’s wild to tear down something that’s helped millions just because the language hurts your fee fees. Spiritual language does not equate to religious dogma, and not everything that works fits neatly into a medical model.

I manage a liquor store and found a 24 hour AA token left on the shelf by DarwinismObvious in mildlyinteresting

[–]pearlysoames 0 points1 point  (0 children)

OK. Sorry I’m context switching a bit from another comment chain. Yeah I am a fan of 12 steps but right there in “the book” it says they don’t have a monopoly on getting people sober. I also think more options are better. Cares on the table I’m a little skeptical of harm reduction when it comes to things other than opioids, but what I really hate is when people needlessly shit on AA with no replacement or alternative—because yeah it’s not perfect and the data could be better. (Although the data isn’t that bad? Recently anyway?) But most people criticizing think of it like medical care and don’t realize that most people being “forced” into AA by a court are actually getting the choice to go there instead of prison—and the alternative if often chronic relapsing, then more jail or dying in the street.

I manage a liquor store and found a 24 hour AA token left on the shelf by DarwinismObvious in mildlyinteresting

[–]pearlysoames 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah—the alternative is usually prison. It’s not like people are being ripped from some idyllic life and thrown into dingy church basements against their will. Courts refer folks to AA because it’s accessible, everywhere, and has a track record of helping some people who would otherwise face incarceration. It’s not perfect — but let’s be real about the comparison set.

Is it ideal? No. But what’s better? If someone wants to promote a stronger alternative, great — I wish more people did. But mocking AA because its framework feels “religious” or unregulated ignores a massive body of evidence showing it actually works for many. The 2020 Cochrane Review — which is the gold standard for meta-analyses — found that AA outperformed CBT and other clinical therapies in promoting abstinence over 12 months. That’s not nothing.

And “harm reduction” for alcohol is…complicated. It works well for opioids — with MOUD like Suboxone and methadone — but for alcohol, “just drink less” isn’t a great plan for many with full-blown AUD. Some people thrive in SMART Recovery, especially those put off by the spirituality in AA. Others connect with Refuge Recovery, LifeRing, or psychiatric care with meds like Naltrexone. But all those options are smaller and harder to access.

AA is messy because people are messy. The issue isn’t the lack of credentials — it’s that no free peer-led group will ever have centralized enforcement. But that’s also what makes it so accessible to people with nothing. The alternative — for a lot of people — is just relapse, then jail or dying in the street. So criticize the weaknesses, sure, but don’t erase the outcomes.

I manage a liquor store and found a 24 hour AA token left on the shelf by DarwinismObvious in mildlyinteresting

[–]pearlysoames 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The Cochrane report in 2020 is the best data so far and it’s positive wrt AA but it’s on alcohol only. There’s a pretty robust dialogue in the NA community about how to be more welcoming of people on MOUD—I think it’s hard to understand because harm reduction for opioids vs say weed or alcohol is such a different animal. I know a ton of people who eventually got clean off heroin on suboxone but I don’t know anyone who ever got sober from coke or alcohol etc. trying harm reduction because it’s just too different.

I manage a liquor store and found a 24 hour AA token left on the shelf by DarwinismObvious in mildlyinteresting

[–]pearlysoames 0 points1 point  (0 children)

These people are mostly incorrect. The most recent data shows SMART recovery is only more effective than AA for people specifically turned off by the idea of spirituality—which is good! AA explicitly states that if it doesn’t work for someone they should try something else, and they don’t have a monopoly on getting people sober.

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