By Michael's own warped logic we can play this same game: they chose to deploy pepper spray, chose to beat him, chose to escalate, chose to fire. He’s dead. He wouldn’t be if they had exercised restraint. That’s a choice. Own it. Et voilà.

"Toxic empathy" is for people who feel nothing but understand their ideas can’t spread unless you stop feeling too. They don’t experience empathy, so they need you to shut yours off to make their views workable. It's a confession: "I can’t win if people keep caring".

We’ve crossed the line from speculation into self-parody. The genre has officially eaten itself.

A conspiracy theorist is someone who thinks there are secret pedophile rings everywhere except the ones that have been proven

"Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned." storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…

"All of this is real." And, as usual, literally none of it is. At what point do we stop calling this misinformation and start calling MAGA an ideology built on permanent conflict with and hostility to reality?

I try to explain to people that even if I disagree with the left on a lot, ideology matters less than ever. Think about this. On Spotify, the top podcasts in the country at one point last year were NPR and NYT on the left, and Tucker and Candace on the right. Imagine aliens

White fragility. Historical illiteracy. Racist dogwhistle. Calling a Black woman “an assault on civilization” tells me everything I need to know about your civilization. Charles Murray has spent decades pretending inequality is natural so no one has to feel obligated to fix it.

Ensiferum - Into Battle

Cargo-cult contrarianism. When you hate post-modernism while embodying it perfectly.

If you ever want to become a ufology engagement farming grifter like Astral🛸 here's what you do: Step 1: Be ignorant of medieval art. Step 2: Refuse to learn. Step 3: Know that your audience also doesn't care to learn. "Is this evidence of ancient ufo crash retrievals?"

Grief isn’t just losing your pet. It also lives on in a toddler who doesn’t know what death is, only that someone is missing and keeps asking for her to come home. Hearing “I want Maia to come back to this house” hurts because you can’t explain it and you can’t fix it.