Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

How stupid are these people?

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

The lights are all blinking red.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

We will not go back.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / Bernie Sanders 2016 / Late Night Open Thread: Feel the Bern! (But Wash Your Hands, First)

Late Night Open Thread: Feel the Bern! (But Wash Your Hands, First)

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Truly, the inventiveness of social media shall never fail to astonish. As Slate explains the phenomenon:

… Buzzfeed reports that Tinder has blocked one New Jersey 23-year-old, Robyn Gedrich, from using the app after several users reported her for spamming them with the same request: “Do you feel the bern? Please text WORK to 82623 for me. Thanks!” She sent that message to dozens of matches each day for two weeks straight. Gedrich started her tack after becoming disillusioned by the men she matched with on the app. She decided, without any directive from the Sanders campaign, to try her hand at political persuasion instead. “These guys are disgusting. They’re just looking for sex and that’s it,” she told Buzzfeed. “So if they’re going to swipe right, they might as well do some good and donate to the man, the myth, the legend: Bernie.”

Tinder locked another young woman, married Iowan Haley Lent, out of the app for using it as a campaigning tool. Lent told Reuters she paid for Tinder’s premium privileges so she could change her location to New Hampshire and match with potential voters there. One man from California told the BBC that the tactic stemmed from a feeling that Sanders wasn’t getting enough mainstream press to reach young voters.

These renegade Sanders swipers have gathered in a Facebook group, Bernie Sanders’ Dank Tinder Convos, to share screenshots of their text conversations with matches. With encouraging comments and plenty of ridicule for Tinder matches who respond to Berners with Trump talking points, it’s become a kind of support group for people who use the dating app to canvass singles in their area. “Let’s take over Tinder with Bernie Sanders convos,” the group’s mission reads. The screenshots show a lot of backlash from unwilling marks… It’s making the Facebook group a kind of consciousness-raising space around the absolute garbage men fling at women on Tinder…

Consciousness-raising!… and to think, back in the day, we mostly used that phrase sarcastically, when a borderline-sexist joke or offhand comment fell flat. Good to know that the Youngs continue to invent new political uses for consumerist technology, I suppose.

Reader Interactions

84Comments

  1. 1.

    Steeplejack

    “Dank Tinders” should be the name of something—an obscure band or a character in one of those BBC period pieces.

  3. 3.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    I spent the evening watching a member of the Kessel family playing for a team that isn’t underperforming. Penguins fans may feel jealous now.

    Seriously, it’s a great story. Amanda Kessel won the Patty Kazmeier in 2013 as the best player in the country for her role on a Minnesota team that went 41-0-0. (Admittedly, I thought her teammate, Megan Bozek, should have been the winner.) She missed the 2013-14 season to be on the Olympic team. Until tonight, she hadn’t played a single hockey game because of a concussion she picked up either at the Olympics or a couple of weeks earlier. She missed the entire 2014-15 academic year, too, because of lingering symptoms.

    We all thought she was done. She even announced her retirement from hockey over the summer. In December, rumors began spreading that she’d been practicing with the Gophers; those rumors were confirmed about three weeks ago. Still, I thought it was great that she was able to be physically active again but thought there was no way that she’d actually play again. Then, on Wednesday, it was announced that she’d be in the line up against North Dakota this weekend.

    She looked really good for someone who hadn’t played in two years. She didn’t dominate, but you could see the talent and the speed. The only real issue was her stamina, and I have no idea how long that will take her to get back, especially since there are only three weeks left in the regular season and then four weeks of playoffs. Still, she was out on the penalty kill and played all 14 seconds of power play time the Gophers had tonight. (Her addition won’t do anything to hurt a power play that was already clicking at 48% for the season. No other team is over 28%.) She had two assists.

  4. 4.

    BlueDWarrior

    Sitting here at work, and going through this video, and just kinda marvelling at how, even with the increase in general production values in local sports broadcasts, there is a certain amount of charm lost since most over the air local networks can’t broadcast the ‘local’ professional team.

    Then again as a Baton Rouge resident, the nearest (and only) local professional team were the New Orleans Saints until about 15 years ago when the Hornets (now Pelicans) moved from Charlotte. So I never knew a time when my [local professional team] would come on the [local broadcast network] a couple of times a week.

    Honestly I feel I would enjoy Saints games even more if I could have homer broadcasters on, I guess I need to go get a proper radio for next season.

  6. 6.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym: I was thinking about concussions today… There are a few woodpeckers in our neighborhood and I remembered reading about how their heads have special features to keep their brains from turning to mush, their eyes from flying out, etc.

    It’s well past time that sports helmets incorporate such features, isn’t it?

    Sonny Bono, Michael Kennedy, Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonzo, all the NFL players, etc., etc. Too many people have been killed or seriously injured over things that we should have solved long ago.

    I’m glad you got to see Amanda play. Here’s hoping she is able to continue to recover and safely play the sport she loves.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  8. 8.

    Kropadope

    @Steeplejack:

    I think helmets with huge pointed beaks would be awesome.

    It’ll probably do a way better job of preventing helmet-to-helmet tackles than the stiffened penalties have.

  14. 14.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @Cacti:

    No one should care about that stupid stuff. Bernie’s a protest candidate, and a good one – but that’s all. He’s fulfilled his mission, and he’s not going to be president.

  16. 16.

    benw

    @Omnes Omnibus: I think you might be right. Have you seen how Rugby and Aussie-rules footballers tackle? It’s a kind of controlled slide for both players, where everybody’s head and neck are out of play. It’s completely different from how American players lead with the shoulder and head into the tackle.

  20. 20.

    Mike J

    @benw:

    It’s completely different from how American players lead with the shoulder and head into the tackle.

    Youtube has videos of Pete Carrol teaching the “hawk tackle”, and explaining to kids that this is the way everyone should tackle. It is of course just a rugby tackle. And no, the Seahawks don’t do it all the time.

  21. 21.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Kropadope: I enter this discussion as a Packer fan and a retired rugby player. Without pads, one can’t act as a missile. Rugby tackling requires making firm contact, wrapping one’s arms, and driving through the person. No concussive contact happens. Even when one hits the ground since the game mostly seems to happen in mud.

  26. 26.

    Mike J

    Speaking of football, here’s a great story:

    This Sunday’s Super Bowl will be a stern test for Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning, who will not only face the Panthers, but also have to contend with the ever-present shadow of the white quarterbacks who’ve successfully led their teams to Super Bowl glory.
    …
    Manning, with his intelligence, keen decision-making ability, work ethic, attention to detail, lack of mobility, and creamy skin, may be the perfect embodiment of this white tradition.

    Peyton Manning has always been prepared for the burden of whiteness. It’s probably why he made the decision to tailor his game as a traditional pocket passer, rather than to push himself to join the world of athletic, instinctual, natural athletes like Randall Cunningham, Michael Vick, and Akili Smith. It’s a decision that looks to have paid off well for the white Broncos quarterback.

  27. 27.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    Unless we can figure out a way to vote by smartphone, I fear the Youngs will be forever lost to politics.

  28. 28.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @Mike J:

    OMG, so amazing. Could our white guys be learning? I actually got the chance to call out a bro at work today complaining that Cam is SO ARROGANT!!! I actually said to him really? do you mean uppity? Shut him right the fuck up.

  30. 30.

    Cacti

    Speaking of sacrificing your body to the gods of football, ESPN has a feature on NFL legend Joe Montana’s post football impairments:

    -Arthritis of the hands, one elbow, and both knees

    -Balky knee that can’t be straightened despite 6 surgeries, and that will eventually require replacement

    -Bad neck, for which he’s undergone 3 fusion procedures

    -Lazy eye from nerve damage

    Link

  32. 32.

    benw

    @Mike J: Pete seems like a decent guy. And here’s @Omnes Omnibus defining the perfect rugby tackle. Which is great in the open field. The problem is that the collisions at the line in American football are so vicious now that the guys are so big, that even without helmets those dude’s brains are going to get hurt.

  41. 41.

    Cacti

    @goblue72:

    And the point is exactly what pops? You forget to drink your Ovaltine tonight?

    Ovaltine’s a drink for kids.

    Are you even American?

  44. 44.

    benw

    @Omnes Omnibus: I don’t have one. Some of my friends have come up with rule changes that effectively limit player size and power, but any sport where players come off the line like they do in US football is going to hurt players’ brains. Which is too bad, because I love watching football. Getting rid of helmets/pads would make the game more fluid, like Rugby, but then it wouldn’t be football.

  45. 45.

    gwangung

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne:

    I actually got the chance to call out a bro at work today complaining that Cam is SO ARROGANT!!!

    Heh.

    You take your team to the Super Bowl as a QB, no matter who you are, you get the right to be arrogant.

  46. 46.

    Goblue72

    @Cacti: A drink for kids who were kids in the middle of last century. Who today are old farts. I know it’s past your bedtime pops, but try to keep up.

  47. 47.

    Cacti

    @Goblue72:

    A drink for kids who were kids in the middle of last century. Who today are old farts. I know it’s past your bedtime pops, but try to keep up.

    Is that what the googles told you, Sanjay?

    I figured Cruz would outsource his ratfucking ops to Mumbai. Cheap bastard.

  48. 48.

    Joey Maloney

    Speaking of stupid attorney tricks (as you all were downstairs), did you see the update on Daleiden, the “Center” for “Medical” “Progress” douchebag?

    So you’re facing a federal charge that’s a possible 20 years, right, and the evidence is from video that you yourself shot. The prosecutor offers you a diversion program, probation and then the charges dropped after a couple of years if you stay out of trouble. What do you do?

    Why, naturally, you have your lawyer turn the offer down flat, and then have him stand out on the steps of the courthouse and demand an apology.

    As one does.

  49. 49.

    gwangung

    @Joey Maloney: No other way for them to go. Go to trial, get acquitted, you’ve undergone a Test for your god. Get convicted, you get martyr points….and you get to appeal. Longer you draw it out, the more martyr points. Win, win.

  52. 52.

    magurakurin

    @Goblue72: If you think you are actually getting digs in on Cacti, you really haven’t been around here for very long. Cacti is like a bulldog with a rag in its mouth. Never lets go. Goes on and on and on and on. Until pretty much ever last person in the room is sick and tired, angry and hungry, and heading for the door. Love’m or hate’m, Cacti’s been around here a lot lot longer than you and been in many a bar fight.

    but if it works for you, have at it, squish.

  53. 53.

    Cacti

    @magurakurin:

    If you think you are actually getting digs in on Cacti, you really haven’t been around here for very long. Cacti is like a bulldog with a rag in its mouth. Never lets go. Goes on and on and on and on. Until pretty much ever last person in the room is sick and tired, angry and hungry, and heading for the door. Love’m or hate’m, Cacti’s been around here a lot lot longer than you and been in many a bar fight.

    but if it works for you, have at it, squish.

    *tear

  55. 55.

    Amir Khalid

    Leading into a tackle with your head and going for an opponent’s head are dangerous play; they should be penalised as such. With the American football equivalent of a red card, if there is one, and maybe suspension for a match or two or to the end of the season. A career-ending ban, for persistent offenders. No sport is worth the high risk of CTE that comes about because of how Amfootball is played.The NFL should ignore the protestations that continuing to allow such dangerous play preserves the “manliness” of the sport.

    My understanding of Michael Schumacher’s skiing injury is that he had a GoPro camera mounted to the side of his helmet. When he fell on a rock, he landed on the camera which resulted in a concentrated point of impact that overcame the helmet’s ability to protect him.

  58. 58.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @Glidwrith: Because we don’t have any way to add padding between the brain and the skull.

    Keep in mind that there are two components to a collision: energy and momentum. Energy does the damage, but momentum leads to it. The problem with momentum, as opposed to energy, is that it is vectored. In a collision, both must be conserved. Racing cars are designed to fly apart in a serious crash, and each of those parts carries a bit of the energy with them, and since they tend to continue traveling in the same direction that the car was going before the crash, they take some of the momentum, too.

    Helmet technology is getting very good at dissipating energy, but it’s terrible at dealing with momentum. So, the energy produced by the object that hits a players head doesn’t transmit energy directly, but it does push the head sharply in the direction of the force. Then the head comes to a sudden stop as the limits of the neck muscles are reached. But the brain inside the head doesn’t stop moving, and it collides with the inside of the skull with enough force to cause bruising. That’s a concussion.

    Until we find a way to prevent the brain from sloshing around inside the cranium, or find something that can absorb the momentum of a collision and conserve the momentum without transferring much of it to the head itself, collisions will result in concussions. We can’t even design helmets that fly apart in a crash to do it. Aside from the impracticality of needing to replace a helmet every time you collide, a helmet just doesn’t have enough mass. It works for Indy cars because the car masses far more than the driver, and so it can take a lot of momentum with it as it flies apart and separate from the human inside. A helmet massive enough to do that would be unwearable.

  59. 59.

    Ruckus

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
    Mfg have been working on air bags for helmets. The air bag slows down the deceleration better than rigid foam that has been used. Seems to be getting encouraging results in racing, however football has the problem of repeated hits over a longer period of time, while motorsports have, as I’ve been told, may have larger hits, there are generally fewer in an accident than during a ballgame. As a side note airfence has been used around racetracks in motorcycle racing for a couple of decades, which decelerates the blow very well and cuts down on serious injuries. Still have the issue of the brain vs inside of skull but slowing the rate of deceleration helps with that somewhat.

  60. 60.

    Glidwrith

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Um, that was intended as a joke. I have become familiar with the problems of preventing concussion injury, partly from similar summarizations that you just posted.

    Massive congrats on your book by the way!

  65. 65.

    Betty Cracker

    @magurakurin: A bulldog licking its own asshole, more like. But let’s not discourage them. Watching that pair of douchebros trade witless barbs is as entertaining as seeing a pair of mangy, meth-addled possums square off in a dumpster over a basket of rotten citrus fruits.

  66. 66.

    Zinsky

    I am still laughing over a Daily Kos article that points out TRUS is a medical acronym that refers to a “transrectal ultrasound”. So, the slimy Ted Cruz’s not-so-clever campaign slogan, TrusTed , means he is ready to probe the rectums of all Americans, which we all kind of guessed anyway!

  68. 68.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Ruckus: Motorcycle racing has a mixed record in accidents — one advantage of the sport is that in an accident the rider separates from the bike usually quite quickly and after that they’re usually sliding and losing energy over a period of several seconds without the extra momentum being on their bike would give them. I’ve seen video of bikers high-siding on a racetrack at over 100 mph, sliding and tumbling into the barriers or over the grass and getting up and walking away. It helps that protective outfits are very good today, especially in the spinal area and around knees and elbows.

    On the other hand there’s the Isle of Man TT and GP course which usually kills at least one rider a year, sometimes more. In those cases the riders are on a road course running through small villages and between stone walls and sometimes there isn’t anywhere for them to lose energy slowly before they hit a very solid barrier and the damage is done. You can find a lot of Youtube videos showing the TT races if you want to see people driving through small town streets at 160mph perfectly legally.

  71. 71.

    different-church-lady

    @Betty Cracker:

    Watching that pair of douchebros trade witless barbs is as entertaining as seeing a pair of mangy, meth-addled possums square off in a dumpster over a basket of rotten citrus fruits.

    Errr… you know this how?

  72. 72.

    different-church-lady

    Next up: mass-bookings of Uber trips to harangue poor “ride sharing” drivers to the light side!

  75. 75.

    Geeno

    @Betty Cracker: Betty, that has the sad ring of experience to it. I won’t ask about the possums in your neck of the woods.

    I remember back in the 90’s one of the Bills’ safeties had a concussion problem. They gave him a helmet that had an outer shell attached with a little extra padding, but the big safety feature was that the shell would break off – like the race car parts – in a hard enough collision, and could be popped back into place.
    I haven’t heard of that kind of helmet since. It looked a bit odd – like he had an over-sized helmet, and he didn’t like the look, but that would be a terrible reason to prevent their adoption (assuming they worked as designed).

  76. 76.

    BruceFromOhio

    It’s making the Facebook group a kind of consciousness-raising space around the absolute garbage men fling at women on Tinder…

    And this is different from the rest of the Gaia-damned internet … how? If Tinder is so fraught with peril, don’t sign up for it, don’t participate in using it. It’s like Yahoo comment boards – if it’s such a cesspool, stay away.

    @Mike J: This Sunday is a peep-show game – two quarters and you’re done. Manning will end his career with the Broncos suffering an embarrassing loss to the Panthers, and rightly so: Carolina is simply a much better team than Denver.

    @Omnes Omnibus: This.

  79. 79.

    Jasmine Bleach

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne:

    I’m sorry, but that article is stupid. Who says Sanders can’t be pragmatic? The view that he isn’t practical is hogwash–he’s shown himself practical on many occasions.

    But the “I’m voting for Clinton because all Sanders has is a wish list of fantasies that can never become reality!” is such heaping bullpocky because of the following reasons:

    1. Sanders entirely on his own as President can reschedule marijuana–something Clinton has stated she is against. This would–undercut the number of people going into the prison system (largely African Americans), dramatically curtail the war on drugs, dramatically reduce the income of cartels outside the US, reduce the viability of prisons for profit, and provide an avenue for more taxation.

    2. Sanders would veto the TPP (and the corresponding European version)–something Clinton is highly questionable on (she was vehemently for it until about a month or two ago). The TPP would hasten income inequality, strengthen the power of corporations, and in many cases make our judicial system nonviable.

    3. Sanders would not attack Iran and seek to normalize relations. Clinton is much more of a war hawk, and our chances of another war are (IMHO) much greater with her.

    4. Sanders would at least GET THE MESSAGE OUT THERE that things like single payer, breaking up big banks, and income inequality need to be fixed. These are things that centrists like Clinton and Obama just never do, so it’s never in the national discussion! Damnit–people need to talk about what we really need! Otherwise, it will NEVER change because it won’t even be discussed. In my opinion, Sanders is the only one who will do this.

    5. Sanders would nominate members to the supreme court who are less centrist than Clinton.

    Except for that last one, Sanders would need no help from Congress at all, and would be worlds above Clinton. Of course, this is just my opinion and yours may differ. But, Sanders could be a great president, just because of the above.

  81. 81.

    Gex

    All my non-political Facebook groups get spammed constantly by Bernie supporters despite repeated requests to stop politicking in neighborhood groups, activity groups, queer groups.

    No other candidate’s supporters have shown this much disrespect of these groups. No other candidate’s supporters have hijacked my interests and my attention and spammed me to no end.

    I follow politics very closely. I understand the issues and political realities in my way. These kids come in and talk to me like I’m a fucking idiot. They act like it would be a good thing if a very determined president can force his agenda through despite a less supportive or outright hostile congress, and don’t care that such a system would let a Republican president do the same exact thing.

    I’m so sick of them. I’m so sick of Bernie’s perpetual inability to acknowledge that the people who agree with him on economic issues that vote R do so BECAUSE of social justice issues, that economic justice without addressing social justice issues is just supporting a 1950’s economy that routed most of the economic justice to white men. And that brown people, women, queers are very nervous about that and frankly get tired of being told that bringing us up equal to white men is less important of an issue than bringing white men up to the level of rich white men. And that shouting at me like I don’t fucking understand a single goddamn thing in the most condescending manner is not really making me like their candidate more.

    I’m not one bit surprised that Tindr had to do this.

    – With apologies to the many Sanders supporters who aren’t assholes and recognize these issues.

  82. 82.

    Joel

    Robyn Gedrich, from using the app after several users reported her for spamming them with the same request: “Do you feel the bern? Please text WORK to 82623 for me. Thanks!” She sent that message to dozens of matches each day for two weeks straight. Gedrich started her tack after becoming disillusioned by the men she matched with on the app.

    You think *she* was disappointed…

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