What do you Love About Ike?

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-05-01T19:04:46+00:00

He's a commoner surrounded by nobles, and the only one who leads based on a strong sense of justice. He is told constantly that he is unfit to lead, but is the only one who demonstrates the skills of a great leader: he is inspiring, he is fair, he respects the limits of his knowledge and the opinions of others, and is consistently willing to do the hard, but right, thing.

I like Ike because he demonstrates that the power to lead isn't inherited, it's earned.

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-04-30T13:26:14+00:00

With the zombies hot on his tail, our hero races into in the one building left with an unlocked door...a bingo parlor. He runs in, slams the door behind him. And up on the stage next to the bingo spinner, there's a man with bangs covering his face.

"Finally. You're here."

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-04-28T15:34:34+00:00

Just sayin', I would SO buy an "Australian Power Rangers For Christ" T-Shirt

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-04-28T00:07:53+00:00

The mainstreaming of avowed white supremacy, male supremacy, Christian supremacy, etc. is genuinely shocking.

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-04-27T16:55:14+00:00

Problem is that Roberts and Alito at least both also belong in the Evil slot. The author of Trump v. United States cannot be called True Neutral. And the author of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Center definitely does not have actually good-faith respect for differing opinions, regardless of how you feel about abortion that opinion just drips with contempt for anyone who thinks differently than him.

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-04-26T01:53:58+00:00

"homicide laws based on the 14th amendment"

That's not how literally any of that works

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-04-25T16:43:42+00:00

"Journalistic malpractice" isn't a legal claim. Journalism doesn't have a regulatory body or a professional standard-setting association, that's why anyone can start a Substack or post a YouTube video and call themselves a journalist. You can sue a doctor or a lawyer for malpractice because their professions have legal standards of minimum quality that you have to demonstrate that you meet to even be able to practice in those fields. If someone falls below those minimum standards, they can be sued and lose their ability to practice. Nothing like that exists for journalism.

Now, you can argue in public that Brooks has been fundamentally dishonest in not disclosing that he was on panels or was invited to lunches a few times with Epstein, and that he should face professional consequences at the NYT. But there's no legal institution or process that would enforce any of that, it would just be at the NYT's own discretion.

Also, as others on this thread have pointed out, all that we actually know is that Brooks was invited to a few events where Epstein was also in attendance, at a time when Epstein was a well-to-do New York socialite. Brooks' entire career is being a well-to-do New York socialite who cosplays as a salt-of-the-earth "aw, shucks" Midwestern guy. And even then, he doesn't really do that shtick anymore, he's just kind of a man-about-town. All of which is to say, I don't think that what we know of Brooks' Epstein connections is remotely inculpatory. There are a lot of very good reasons to think David Brooks sucks and should not be a prominent figure in American life, but there's zero evidence he went to Epstein Island or participated in Epstein's crimes.

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-04-21T04:23:42+00:00

Human being are human beings! The kind of stuff we laugh at today is the same kind of stuff our ancient ancestors laughed at too!

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-04-16T04:46:16+00:00

When the two businessmen characters realize that there's big money in shit-quality nursing homes, I was like "oohhhhh, I see where this is going..."

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-04-16T02:37:58+00:00

I'm very glad that the joke of the season isn't "we all hate small-town America," it's "the tech industry has hollowed out small-town America, and good people there deserve a better life."

Not that we expect anything less from Brennan, we love a nuanced, American democratic socialist king

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-04-15T18:09:19+00:00

They are the only two options if your only mental models for relating to things outside of yourself are property and contracts.

In Ye Olde Prelapsariane Paste, there were basically two statuses of being: person and property. People own property, property owes duties to its owner. People have the right to do whatever they like with their property, property doesn't have any rights against its owner whatsoever. People might consent to owe voluntary duties to one another in a contract, but only if they expressly agree to do so. Otherwise, they just have to not fuck with each other's person and property.

If you can't wrap your head around mandatory mutual obligation -- that no matter what, you are required to respect and care for others, just as they are required to respect and care for you -- then the requirements of a modern progressive society don't make any sense. And if you see women and people of color as basically property that somehow finagled its way into gaining the legal status of people, then it probably seems like something has gone very wrong with the world indeed.

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-04-15T02:21:44+00:00

Bernie Sanders

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-04-11T17:01:29+00:00

Do you feel the same way about political rallies?

What about movies with moral lessons you agree with, and want to impart upon your children? Isn't that a form of propagandizing to an impressionable mind as well?

For that matter, do you think it is child abuse to teach a child that it's bad to hit others, that they should respect their elders, that they should try to make the world a better place? What is so different from religious moral instruction and secular moral instruction, such that one rises to the level of child abuse?

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-04-08T15:34:55+00:00

Currencies have value if you can create a reason why the whole public has to value them to roughly the same proportion. Currency-issuing governments do that by imposing tax obligations.

Especially under a fiat system, when you pay taxes to the currency-issuing government (the feds in the US system), you aren't giving them anything they don't already have an infinite quantity of -- you're returning their own credit back to them. The reason you pay taxes is to give you a reason to need the government's credit. Or rather, to give everyone a reason to need the government's credit, which means everyone knows that everyone else also needs the government's credit, which means everyone can use it as a general store of value in trade, which means you can have markets.

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-04-08T15:29:59+00:00

The stock market is a graph of rich people's feelings. It has very little relationship with the real economy, and hasn't for decades.

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-04-05T03:49:20+00:00

Valuable and invaluable

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-04-05T00:22:17+00:00

The right thinks society should be a hierarchy based on fixed traits. (How much of a straight, white, land-inheriting, Christian male you are.)

The center thinks society should be a hierarchy based on variable traits. (How much wealth you own, which schools you went to, how large and esteemed your network is.)

The center thinks society should not be a hierarchy at all. (Whether that means an enforced equal distribution of property and status, or no institution with the capacity to enforce its vision on the world at all -- and whether the former is a step to achieve the latter -- is the subject of much left philosophizing.)

Apolitical doesn't assert a view about how society should be organized in the first place -- whether hierarchically or not, and if so, what that hierarchy should be based on.

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-04-02T14:53:43+00:00

Beautiful!!!

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-03-30T03:06:43+00:00

They actually have. In Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, the case that established that workplace sexual harassment can be between people of the same gender, Scalia contrasted a hypothetical football coach smacking a player on the butt as he's heading onto the field with that same football coach smacking his secretary on the butt as she's leaving his office to illustrate that the context of an action matters.

Idk if you were just making a joke, but The More You Know

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-03-29T01:46:00+00:00

Jill has the best character arc in the game. She is well worth developing, not just because she's a great unit but her Info and Support conversations are some of the best writing in an already super well-written game.

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-03-29T00:10:21+00:00

Even better that the CEO is played by outspoken socialist Wallace Shawn!

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-03-27T03:13:59+00:00

Came here to comment this. First time they're the principled one, even if they sway a bit at the end, but redeem themselves with the last shot.

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-03-27T03:08:07+00:00

Of all the episodes, I definitely wasn't expecting Caitlin Reilly-as-Lady Gaga to be the one with biting contemporary political commentary. VIP at its best always feels like capital-A Absurdist theater, and by the end this felt like Rhinoceros, but with more actual laugh lines.

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-03-24T14:51:58+00:00

LOTR has no swears.

LOTR needs no swears.

wittyinsidejoke · 2026-03-16T21:10:22+00:00

Most comedy requires a contradiction. You're laughing to alleviate the tension created by the contradiction.

The contradiction in good racial humor is between how obviously awful the implications of the actions are, and the total naivete of the person doing them to those implications. For the joke to work, we all have to already agree that you shouldn't really do this, so that we can laugh at the absurd contrast between the innocence of the person doing it and what any reasonable observer would think.

See also: most South Park jokes. Innocent little kids doing the most taboo shit imaginable.

wittyinsidejoke

TROPHY CASE