I was listening to JFA this morning and that made me think of the picture above. I have been listening to a lot of old punk lately- Clash, Dead Kennedies, aformentioned JFA, Black Flag, Bad Brains, etc. Not sure if that is the right thing for me to be listening to in my current frame of mind or exactly what I need to be fucking listening to right now. Regardless, let’s start in on today’s offense to decency and other bullshit:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to spend $38.3 billion on new detention facilities to meet the agency’s growing demand for bedspace and to streamline the removal process for people living in the country illegally.
All I know is they better spend every penny and make those detention centers cozy as hell because if I have any say in things in 2029 a lot of motherfuckers working for ice are going to be living there for an extended amount of time and some of them FOREVER. I know I have said this before, but the winning candidate for me an many other people is going to be the Democrat who will jumped over the table and bite the ear off the Republican candidate.
I have heard my sister and my mother say things I never in a million years thought I would hear them say, and they keep getting angrier and angrier. And while I feel bad for them and also a little “welcome to my hellhole,” I am also so fucking happy and proud and relieved I am because I know a lot of you have lost people to the dark lord.
In other news, this is at least happening:
Federal authorities have opened a criminal probe into whether two immigration officers lied under oath about a shooting in Minneapolis last month, as all charges were dropped against two Venezuelan men.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons said Friday that his agency opened a joint probe with the Justice Department after video evidence revealed “sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements” about the shooting of one of the Venezuelan men during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown across the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
The officers, whose names were not disclosed, are on administrative leave while the investigation is carried out, he said. Lyons said the two ICE officers could be fired and face criminal prosecution.
Once again, I must remind everyone of this quote from Gore Vidal: “It is no secret that American police rarely observe the laws of the land when out wilding with each other, and as any candid criminal judge will tell you, perjury is often their native tongue in court.”
Seriously, hoocoodanode?
A lot of this country has lost their fucking minds, and you need to understand that it is not just the olds, but we are really starting to get the results of our 20 year experiment of cooking kid’s brains in social media’s fetid brew, and let me tell you, it ain’t good:
Clavicular is 6-foot-2, weighs 180 pounds and has a 31-inch waist. His biacromial width — basically the span of the clavicle, from which the 20-year-old streamer gets his name — is 19.5 inches. He has a midface ratio, which is derived by dividing the distance from the pupil to the mouth by the distance between the pupils, of 1.07. His chin to philtrum ratio is 2.6.
According to Clavicular, these calculations make him handsome. Just not as handsome as the actor Matt Bomer.
Clavicular is a Looksmaxxer, the first star from an online community that holds male attractiveness as the key to worldly achievement. He considers Mr. Bomer to possess the most harmonious man’s face in existence, beyond even his own. That’s where the bimaxillary osteotomy, also known as double jaw surgery, comes in. The streamer wants one.
Because, like all Looksmaxxers, he believes any step toward increasing his beauty to be virtuous. But it’s a certain kind of beauty. The Looksmaxxing community prefers people who look like Mr. Bomer: lantern-jawed, symmetrical, white. (A Black man who attempted to make looksmaxxing content was racially harassed, Wired reported last year.)
Clavicular dismisses concerns that the subculture is racist as “dumb.” Since the age of 14, Clavicular, whose real name is Braden Peters, has injected and ingested dozens of controlled substances to “ascend” — Looksmaxxer lingo for becoming more handsome. He has a single goal in mind, and his philosophy requires him to get there as fast as possible. If most people regard self-improvement as a pleasant hike to a more attractive destination, Clavicular’s version of it resembles a grim speed test on a salt flat.
Read the whole thing-it is insane, and yes it is a deeply racist subculture. These guys are all interwoven with the insane kids involved in the shooting of Charlie Kirk.
Again, maybe this is more indicative of my frame of mind, but it sure feels like the American paradox right now is that we have astronomical levels of gun violence, yet there appear to be millions of people high school age and above who need to be punched in the neck. Have these clowns never gone to a bar and tried this shit and no one has punched them? What is going on? Are people doing this shit on the streets of Chicago, NY, and Philly and leaving unscathed?
One real downsides of living in Tempe with a variety of ethnicities is that if the weather is nice the smell from all the different types of meats grilling around the neighborhood will drive you insane with hunger. I am typed out. Time for some Olympics.
A Ghost to Most
If by lost, you mean consigned to the abyss.
Tomb
I don’t think these guys go to bars so they never get shit handed to them. They hang out online and don’t mix socially in person. I see a lot of young people living this way. As an old head who still occasionally goes to bars I don’t see young people out. But,I do live in an old state.
Heidi Mom
With all due respect to Matt Bomer, it’s long been known that the most harmonious male face in existence belongs to Denzel Washington.
MagdaInBlack
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t care how nice a man is to look at, if he’s a gd lunatic.
Chetan Murthy
@Heidi Mom: trudat. Though young Muhammad Ali ….
chemiclord
The sort of people doing this shit barely leave their home. That’s why they are so fucked up.
But, and I want to reassert, these sort of clowns weren’t brainwashed by Joe Rogan or Andrew Tate or [insert influencer here]. The Rogans and Tates of the world realized that there was a market for this brand of bullshit, and told these losers what they’ve always wanted to hear.
Regnad Kcin
GATTACA vs MATERIALISTS
We are so f’d
Old School
The 20 year old needs a new obsession in a few years or he’s in trouble.
Gretchen
That arrest that ICE lied about turned out to be agents shooting into a closed door and hitting the wall above a baby’s bed. Fortunately it missed the baby, but they shouldn’t get away with this.
ThresherK
Did looksmaxxing start with Tek Jansen?
Discuss.
Almost Retired
It took me a minute to get the reference in the first Jodie Foster photo – which is bad because I remember that IT DIDN’T HAPPEN (unfortunately) event clearly. A nice reminder that until Trump became the “Quad God” of evil, fucking Ronald Reagan managed a triple-and-half.
RevRick
@MagdaInBlack: The sad part about boy men like Clavicular is it never occurred to them to ask a woman what she wants or is interested in.
Also, there is the reality of family systems theory that we choose a partner who is close to our level of dysfunction. This theory describes emotional health in terms of self differentiation.
Healthy people know where they end and others begin. They understand the difference between I and you. The unhealthy, however, often get into enmeshed relationships.
Given that Clavicular thinks enhancing his physical appearance will enhance his chances of a good relationship, my hunch is that he is poorly self-differentiated. I could be wrong.
JCJ
During a recent Philadelphia 76ers game two of their players, VJ Edgecombe and Tyrese Maxey, were having a good night. The announcer said they had been “edgemaxxing” all night. I saw this reported and had no clue what that meant. I used that wonderful resource, Urban Dictionary, to learn. When I see the term “looksmaxxing” used in the excerpt from Mr Cole I figure it must be related
Kayla Rudbek
I’m knitting my third Melt the Ice hat tonight, although it’s chilly enough that I would prefer to be knitting a blanket. I will probably have to find a recipient or else check the Minnesota yarn stores to see which ones are taking hat donations.
And then I need to find my blanket pattern and my little digital scale.
stinger
“Since the age of 14”. Where are his parents?
MagdaInBlack
@RevRick: On finding partners with similar dysfunctions, I think of something my husband used to say of such relationships:
“Thank god they found each other, and aren’t inflicting it on some unsuspecting soul”
MagdaInBlack
@stinger: They are probably part of the dysfunction. Oblivious and emotionally absent.
ThresherK
@RevRick: This SMBC has you covered in the “what women are interested in” field.
Barbara
I looked at his photo. He looks like someone who took what were deemed the most aesthetically pleasing individual parts and put them together– the whole isn’t nearly equal to the sum of the parts.
I’m willing to concede that beauty has some advantages in work and popularity, but after you get past a certain threshold of beauty it won’t help to be more or the most beautiful, assuming people can even agree on what that is.
eclare
@MagdaInBlack:
We used to say that (behind their backs) about a couple in our friend circle. There were only two unhappy people instead of four.
suzanne
It is true. He is not as handsome as Matt Bomer.
Can I note that many more men are more handsome than Matt Bomer, though?
Kelly
A lot of this sort of thing happening:
Amos Adams Lawrence, Boston 1854: “we went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists.”
smithsonianmag.com/history/wealthy-activist-who-helped-turn-bleeding-kansas-free-180964494/
Heidi Mom
@Chetan Murthy: And young Jackie Robinson!
Jackie
Hegseth is deciding which colleges and universities are approved for tuition assistance – and which aren’t – based on Wokeness.
wjca
That’s just you not being as hyper-superficial as the “Looksmaxx” types.
Chief Oshkosh
@Kelly: Great article – thanks for the link. One wonders if the Smithsonian Magazine would be allowed to publish something like that today.
Kayla Rudbek
@Jackie: I would personally say that less than half of those schools would qualify as liberal (certainly Pepperdine is more conservative, for one)
Kelly
@Chief Oshkosh: Americans have stopped the kind of evil ICE has been directed to commit before. Several times best I can tell. I’m encouraged that we can. It’s exhausting how many times we’ve had to.
Josie
I submit that different people can have varying ideas of what makes a man handsome (or beautiful, if you prefer). I personally find many of the current heartthrobs a bit soft. I prefer a more rugged appearance, but to each his/her own.
Ramalama
They’re definitely not the Dead Kennedys or Bad Brains or the Clash BUT Wilco (different time, different thrash strategies) is going on the road this summer and Billy Bragg’s joining them for a few dates in ‘Merica to sing songs from the Mermaid Avenue album, which is one of my favorite go-through listens. Not a single dog on that album. It’s really shitty they’ll be in France but not to Quebec. Tabernak.
And yeah, that Jodie Foster photo made me think of President Raygun, so there’s that. I mean keep churning the vibes, people.
I welcome your dark mode, John Cole. It doesn’t put me off.
WTFGhost
@MagdaInBlack: I take exception to that comment!
@chemiclord: I do think that’s part of it. Social media is creating some new addictions, created in part by the lack of reflection. We’re only truly ourselves when we see ourselves reflected in others – it’s one of the reasons solitary confinement drives people crazier than you’d expect. Part of your sense of self is gone, and it lets you be weirder and less reflective.
wjca
@Jackie:
As an alum of the University of California, Berkeley, I am outraged that Stanford (and USC!) made Hegseth’s shit list, but we did not. What’s wrong with this picture?
MagdaInBlack
@WTFGhost: In my mind, you do not fall into that particular niche category. ❤️
You do not frighten me. 😊
WTFGhost
@Kayla Rudbek: Yeah, but the point isn’t to be accurate; let’s face it, Hegseth isn’t competent to do anything but drink. It’s to flex his muscles, to show there’s a new sheriff in town, and, of course, demoralize the officer corps because the military is overfull of good leaders, might as well get some to quit.
Jay
bsky.app/profile/mikehixenbaugh.com/post/3merb6h3yq22v
Eating feasts in front of the starving Death Camp inmates was a favorite act of the Waffen SS.
Bulgakov
I make friends with the back yard neighbors whose grills smell the best.
If I smell charcoal starter you are off the list.
THIS IS NOT A POLITICAL COMMENT ABOUT THE INCIDENT IN KC.
It is about my back yard smells only.
rikyrah
$38 billion?
Get THEE ENTIRE PHUCK OUTTA HERE😠😠😠
This has GRIFT AND SCAM
written all over it😠😠😠
rikyrah
@Jay: The cruelty is always the point😠
prostratedragon
@Chetan Murthy: Good lord! But he also had actual charisma; was lucky enough to see him actually light up a room just by walking in. That is not just looks.
WTFGhost
@Jay: Yeah, and that this particular brand of “Christian Nationalism” thinks in end-terms occasionally amuses me. I could just imagine Jesus lecturing them.
“I TOLD you not everyone who came and said nice things about me, I *told* you to look at what happens around people who spoke in my name, and my DAD, ME fucking ME, Mother Mary, and Papa Joe! HE LITERALLY HAD YOU TORMENT CHILDREN!!!”
Searcher
@RevRick:
*taps the “male beauty standards are about the male social hierarchy, not what women find attractive” sign on the wall
eclare
@Kayla Rudbek:
Vanderbilt is an SEC school. I spent a lot of time there when I was in college at UT because I dated a guy who went there. Greek life was huge, not exactly “woke”.
Jay
@Bulgakov:
Well, it did stop the proposed establishment of the ICE/CBP/CoreCivic Concentration KKKamp.
Later years at the place, got pretty good for the money, charcoal BBQ grill and a starter cone. Little bit of vegetable oil on a paper towel, top with good or great hardwood charcoal, light the paper towel with a propane torch, sit back, have a beer, wait for coals.
eclare
@Bulgakov:
My charcoal starter is one of those cylinders, some newspaper, and a match.
cmorenc
@wjca:
UCal-Berkeley is also called “U Cal Berzerk-ly by some alums I have come across.
Peale
@rikyrah: But the reality is that if there is a Democratic president sometime, that president will inherit a camp system with probably more than a million people, that will be a mix of people like the Russian family who got picked up because everyone who has requested assylum is going to get picked up, plus a child murderer who they grabbed from prison and decided to deport without trial, plus a grandma who lost her citizenship because she wrote a bad check, plus a natural born citizen who couldn’t prove quickly enough where he was born, plus a random green card holder whose only contact with the police was as a rape victim, with no records of whom is where and whom is whom, with an electorate that is divided as to who should be released but will heavily turn against the Democrats in two years if they suddenly decide that they are letting too many people out, and a Supreme Court with that will grant injunctions against letting them out unless a long grueling process is completed and approved by Congress with a Senate with enough members to refuse to vote on a solution to the problem that they caused because they know it will hurt Democrats in the next election.
So even if they only spend 5 billion and pocket the rest, that will be the least of our worries.
At least they didn’t spend it efficiently.
Peale
@Searcher: Yep. Men really really get mad when they realize that women have a say in what they find attractive. In the ideal world, women will conform to the beauty standards men place on them and conform to the beauty standards they place on each other (no homo). But men would prefer that other men find them pretty without that pesky female gaze mocking them.
Timill
@eclare: This is the One True Way.
Or, at least, the only way of which I approve…
Jay
@Peale:
Both President Obama and President Biden, deported far more people than DJTidiot did in his first term and will in his second term.
We are talking millions.
The two major differences, is that President Obama and President Biden deported mostly criminals, and the other difference is that performative cruelty and violence was not the point.
Jay
@Peale:
It goes both ways.
Like most men, I have a “type”. Legs, dark hair, dark eyes, short. Betty Page.
That’s what catches my eye.
Never once dated my “type”.
Always wound up dating and having relationships with interesting strong women.
mvr
@Jackie:
Hegseth and school in the same sentence seems kind of dissonant.
mvr
@Ramalama: Wilco has been good the two times I have seen them. Once here in Nebraska at an outdoor venue (when they moved us from the good seats in the indoor venue putting me in a bad mood) where they overcame my bad mood with a really good show. And then later in Tulsa where I had bought tickets in conjunction with a cancelled trip to the Bob Dylan museum with a friend so wen with my spouse. It was in Cain’s of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys fame, and it also was a really good show. So yes, I endorse these concerts.
Never did see the Clash. Could have gone with the friend who couldn’t make the Tulsa show in PDX in the early 80s, but the Clash sans Mick Jones was not the Clash I knew and loved. So I stayed home.
frosty
@Jay: For some reason, I had two types: short brunettes and tall blondes. Over the years I dated a few of the second but I married one of the first. Still together.
Lyrebird
@Jackie:
Wow. Guess he wants all Pentagon or Anacostia-based folks to go to George Mason and George Mason ONLY. American U and GWU are certainly not out there trying to out-Oberlin, Oberlin. I hope this move pisses off more people.
I know that Adam usually saves “Chr_st, what an a__hole” for Melon Husk, but I imagine it goes through Pentagon employees’ minds every day.
PS: hope your move went okay! and although I was sad for my Pats, I was happy for your Hawks!
sab
@Jay: My husband has tall, very pretty blonde blue-eyed sisters. Much like himself. So he goes for the opposite. I am a grey-eyed midsized (5’5″) brunette. Nearly reaching our 25th anniversary and at my mediocre height I am the tallest woman he ever married or possibly even dated.
Men are weird.
Lyrebird
@Peale:
I’m not disputing your description, and maybe this sounds like #NotAllMen, but thank heaven, it’s NOT all men (witness BJ), and I don’t like giving the “influencer” creeps and Hegseth types the norm. One of the blessings of growing to be an adult was finding out that LOTS of men have far more sense, and are far more interested in character, than the louts raking in $$ for crap dating advice and now eating/surgery-disorder fashion.
Jay
@sab:
We are all weird when it comes to attractions.
Ramalama
@mvr: Those concerts sound wonderful.
cain
@Tomb: who can afford it ?
Reverse tool order
@Lyrebird: My experience is that there are many ways women are attractive, beyond looking some certain way. Perhaps there could be less self deprecation and more peace of mind around that.
The lives of the beautiful people just don’t intersect mine. It sure can be difficult for me to feel connected while doubting myself and unsure I fit in somehow. Not so easy to apply my thoughts right here.
no body no name
@Tomb:
Ughhhh I know a lot of younger guys so I see this first hand daily.
Young people, from both sexes and across all races, do not really go out anymore. Also drinking, dating, and sex are all way down. The new model is both sexes have pods of same sex friends they are very close with and avoid largely avoid the other sex. The mostly interact with these pods online through social media. The few that do try to date do it through online dating where it is 100% a looks and money game and even that’s slowing down.
The guys who are obsessed with self improvement in looks, education, income, even liberal social values are not doing it for women. They are peacocking for the other men in their community and pod. You want to be a 9/10 in looks, six feet tall, six figure income, six pack abs (the 666 required to get a woman) and have the social values a woman wants not to get a woman, but to strut around to other men.
The men who actually want women now are the men who can’t get women and women wouldn’t want.
@Peale:
It’s not about fear of being mocked by women. It’s that men don’t want women at all. Online dating sucks for everyone involved and the complaint that a small amount of men get all the datable women is 100% true. So both sexes are opting out of it. Both sexes have also come to the conclusion that it is better to only interact with their sex.
For men there is also a line of thought that since men still do have to pay for everything on dates financially it’s not worth it. Especially because things are so expensive now dating is a financial drain.
Most peacocks I know are solid Democrats. Pro choice, pro lgbtq rights (they especially love gay men who can properly rate them), and they do vote. They get hit on constantly. They are just not going to take a woman on up it no matter how good looking, how sincere, or how great her personality is. If a woman does check all those boxes they might hang out with her platonically provided both pay their own way only so they can post pictures for their own pod. But they will not date or sleep with her no matter what. Most women are just fine with this as well. As they are also peacocking for other women and not men and posting pictures to their pod of women. It’s not one sex driving it this is as mutual agreement to the end of relationships.
The men who actually want dates and sex are social conservatives.
Welcome to the new normal.
Miss Bianca
@RevRick: guys like this don’t want wonen to be “partners” – they want fuck toys. As many as possible. That’s what “success” with women looks like to them.
The justest possible Karma for this little pantload would be to get The Face of his dreams…and discover that that’s not going to be enough. That *no* woman wants to be his trophy.
Sadly, there are just as many shallow and looks-obsessed women out there as men.
Paul in KY
@MagdaInBlack: Agreed! Think this was started by plastic surgeons or their kids.
Paul in KY
@RevRick: That weirdo is trying to be more handsome than other dudes. To ‘own’ these other dudes. He probably doesn’t care about the candid opinions of rando women.
That’s how fucked up this is.
Paul in KY
@stinger: The dad is a plastic surgeon and the mother, who the fuck knows…
Paul in KY
@suzanne: I just googled ‘Matt Bomer’ and he’s handsome in a ‘white probably asshole’ way.
Paul in KY
@wjca: That is strange.
Paul in KY
@eclare: That’s what I use too.
Paul in KY
@mvr: Have seen good Wilco and bad Wilco. I wish he’d do some songs with that guy he was in a band with before they had a falling out. Uncle Tupelo! Will probably never happen as they dislike each other.
Paul in KY
@no body no name: I am so glad I am old. Maybe the first time I have thought that.