Jeff Lawson has state of Michigan connections. A University of Michigan grad he started a digital textbook company, but was just too early. Then he was founding CTO of StubHub which is based in Detroit.
I regret never actually meeting him though we have some mutual friends in common. Tried to get him to speak at a hackathon I was running in Detroit during his early days at Twilio but he was simply too busy which I can understand. Got Dug Song, cofounder of Duo Security, and he did a terrific job of inspiring all of us.
It is not, just sharing some information about the guy's background a lot of folks might not know. Might explain why he didn't insist in moving them from Chicago and relocating them to the West coast.
Had no idea Ben Collins had become an executive at whatever this thing is. He was an excellent reporter and a guy who really, really understands how the internet works and how communities flourish or go toxic. He reported a lot about Kiwi Farms and Cloudflare's response to public pressure.
Ben collins is a promoter of this left right war, he was literally suspended for being biased. That is not a good reporter, he is a beneficiary of the culture war and its disrespectful to actual factual journalism to call him anything else but a political stereographer who is out to push ideology above facts.
You do have a valid point in what you are trying to say (that Collins got suspended for his strong bias), but the way you communicate it is really doing harm to your message - you are antagonizing too much.
Worth noting that this reply has a lot of the same content as your first one but isn't flagged. This is mostly due to it being phrased in a far less inflammatory manner I think.
I'm downvoting your comments for their strong foaming at the mouth unhinged vibes, and I'd do the same if they ranted in a similar manner against some other part of US culture.
I dare say you could make a comment with fewer empty buzz phrases if you tried.
Further south in the wheat belt, and often called BnS Inseminators Balls with the <cough> Hay day being more the late 1980s and 1990s.
Lot's of burnouts, circle work, lube slides, burning wrecks, food dye, and actual ball in a tent, fire engines, drinking, limousines (both real hires and "bush mechanic" stretched tractors), etc.
Being so far away I either flew in from the Kimberleys or hitch hiked across from Perth to go to a couple.
I'm so square that if I'd tried a pun like that, everyone would've baled.
Looks very reminiscent[0] of Carnival[1], except not seasonal, no utes[2], and we have very few bogans or muppets[3] so ours are usually urban[4]. Also, confetti[5] instead of food colouring.
(good that Sister Sanguinista has a way to relax; people-helping jobs, like vet practice, seem to be a real ticket to burnout)
[0] especially the slogan "where the rams get used and the ewes get rammed"
[1] some balls are held for charity, and some for fancy dress[6], but holding them for pleasure is the course which we profess.
[2] boots and roots, yes. Does "pull" originate from pulling someone into your swag?
[3] coming from an anglophone culture, I was amazed that instead of making "glass pinecones"[7], everyone, despite elevated BAC, piles their dead soldiers in ranks by the recycle bins.
[4] if you're into Analogue Dance Music, there's nothing quite like doof doof in a medieval guild hall or old town alleyway[8]. The recent shopping malls are not so scenic, and the roman coliseums are historic but are too open for gut-felt acoustics.
[5] there's a song somewhere on YT by a young dutch lady about how Karneval is wonderful but it still is a little annoying, mornings, to be picking the confetti out of your pubic hair — with enough compressed air, one can send confetti tens of meters into 2nd storey windows. (we colour our faces via airbrush, and use markers only on exposed skin)
Speaking of exposed skin, some of those blokes might could be risking the worst sunburns of their lives.
> If the female is receptive, she will stand for mating.
So that we know when a ewe has been mated, we place a coloured liquid underneath the ewe or place a harness on the tup which hold a coloured crayon. We change the colour at certain intervals so we know who has been mated when. This explains why you see sheep with different coloured bottoms all over Yorkshire!
EDIT: and I guess the B&S was part of the answer to this 1959 question?
> An American psychologist, Mrs Graham Bell, said she wondered how Australian men and women ever got together enough to get married. But it is not true that Ordinary Australians fail to recognise the value of women. Any man will tell you they are indispensable for packing picnic-baskets, and for keeping other women company while you are drinking with their husbands
It’s so niche that it regularly wins the popular vote in the US despite massive voter suppression.
The only reason the god n guns lobby wins in the US is 1. the constitutional settlement which massively overweights rural voters and 2. corporate lobbying in a winner takes all system which is prepared to hold its nose and bankroll racist hicks if it means they get their corporate welfare.
You are a great nation, but very little that anyone admires about the US has come from the flyover states (and even then probably because of federal pork barrel science and defence funding for those educated elites you hate so much).
You misinterpreted Democrats and progressives, most Democrats, minorities and liberals are closer to the center left rather than extreme left. Polling from many reliable places, including pew, shows Progressive ideology is dominated by upper class white people.
Why do you think stripping resources from the police was so popular amongst upper class intectuals but not what black Americans actually wanted according to the actual data. Progressivism in America is an ideology that represents the upper class, not minorities nor traditional liberals nor the working class.
I think the downvotes are because we don't really want the culture war on hackernews. It tends to not be a very productive topic and makes people emotional, making discussion quality even worse than most other politics (like economic policy, regulations or international relations).
According to your comment history you’re a leftist who, among other things, supports Kyle Rittenhouse. I would say this is a rare configuration of positions.
The point you’re making about Collins suffers because you only labelled him an “extreme leftist”, over and over again, without examples of this behavior. So I went looking, myself. Apparently he was pulled off Twitter coverage because he made posts mocking Elon Musk for suspending the accounts of other journalists. While this might be too opinionated for a professional whose beat includes Musk, it isn’t evidence of “extreme left” views.
> Collins has been yanked off the air from NBC and MSNBC but remains on staff. He has been actively tweeting and retweeting the latest developments related to Musk’s controversial decision to ban the accounts of several left-leaning journalists who were critical of his management of the social media app.
A persons very limited comment history is not a strong measure of values, I don't use this site that much.
I'm not a Kyle Rittenhouse supporter, I merely held that he didn't commit murder which is what many legal experts held as well.
Fwiw my actual policy and culture positions are much more aligned with liberalism when its pragmatic and not pathological altruism.
I'm happy to provide references on ben collins bias, he has been called out multiple times for spreading misinformation despite claiming to be an expert on it.
He has been objectively criticized by multiple legit journalists like glenn greenwald and even moderates like nate silver.
That's a lot of accusation. I've not heard of him before but you can view a list of his articles on NBC. He does seem left-leaning for the US, doesn't look that extremist to me. HNers can decide for themselves: https://www.nbcnews.com/author/ben-collins-ncpn858396
At the risk of engaging in what I'm sure will be a very even-headed and reasonable dialogue, I can think of a handful of things that the moderate American left would do / agree on that the more extreme elements would not. And just because you have to bend over backwards to avoid getting shadowbanned or flagged for even mentioning any of these, I'm not telling anyone where I stand on any of these things. Some I agree with, some I don't. It doesn't matter.
1. Israel has a right to exist and should not just pack up and leave Gaza.
2. Children who are not old enough to get a loan are also not old enough to consent to surgery or hormone blockers.
3. If you transition from male to female you should not be allowed to participate in women's sports.
4. Women's pro athletes getting paid a fraction of what male pro athletes do is a function of supply and demand and is not inherently sexist.
5. There are root causes to the disproportionate incarceration of African Americans that do not boil down to "the system is racist."
6. Taxes should be used to raise revenue in order to provide social and other government services, not as punishment.
None of those positions are inherently conservative and all of them could be held by a popular mainstream Democratic member of Congress or Presidential candidate. All of them (or any of them if voiced loudly enough) would get you ostracized from leftist group.
As a person firmly in the American political left, I have to disagree with all but one of those (point 6 holds true).
1. If you don’t want Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza to stop, you are not a leftist.
2. If you don’t want trans children to get correct healthcare, you are not a leftist.
3. If you want to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people, you are not a leftist.
4. If you don’t want to fix the gender wage gap, you are not a leftist.
5. If you hold racist views, you are not a leftist.
6. The radical left has many different views on taxes. I want to eat the rich, but many on the left do indeed want taxes only to be used as funding of social services.
I’m aware I’m committing No true Scotsman fallacy here. However I don’t see people that hold these views to align anywhere close to me politically—not even moderately. On the left we call people that hold these views conservative democrats, and at best we call them centrists, never moderate leftists. The only people that call them “moderates” are the conservative democrats them selves (and maybe some republicans).
I’m also aware that there is a (very small) faction of communists and tankies, particularly in the UK, which holds anti-trans and racist views, and would agree with points 2, 3, and 5, however, even among communists, they are very niche and still very extreme, so definitely not moderate American left.
The beautiful thing about about groups and diversity is you don't get to decide who is and isn't a leftist. Many would say the same about you given how polarizing your being.
You have literally zero legitimacy or authority to define what leftism is, it doesn't belong to you.
I did admit to blatantly commit the No true Scotsman fallacy. Deciding who does and doesn’t belong in you political faction is ultimately going to result in arbitrary distinction and characterization.
Me as a leftist does not want to be politically aligned with anti-LGBTQ+, anti-feminists, and racists. These aren’t a moderate versions of my and my comrade political beliefs (except the 6th one), they are counter to them. So, as a radical leftist, I do disavow these claims, and don’t want them anywhere near me on the political spectrum.
I do very much appreciate that within the spectrum of the american left/liberals we have those view points.
Edit: to clarify i mean the view points that disagreed with the 6 up above.
I would never want to be in a monoculture where those view points are censored or shut down. It has unfortunately become more common in authoritarian states and even peaceful protests here on campuses.
Sorry to clarify I meant I appreciate the view points you posted by "those", not the ones prior to it(hence i mentioned college campuses in reference to pro-Palestine protests)
You can be liberal / on the left and not be a leftist. Being extreme on the left should be viewed as negatively as it is to be extreme on the right. Extreme opinions of any kind are not conducive to living with people whose beliefs differ from yours.
I mean in another comment you refer to yourself as "a radical leftist" so that sort of proves my point. The points above can be held by liberal, left-of-center politicians who have a chance at holding national political office in the US. Mainstream Democrats, or at least what used to be a mainstream Democrat 10 years ago.
> There are root causes to the disproportionate incarceration of African Americans that do not boil down to "the system is racist."
To claim that there are other root causes then systematic racism behind mass incarceration of black people, is placing a lot of heavy lifting on the other. It is reasonable to assume that a person holding this belief means “cultural” or, worse, “biological”. In either case, it is a racist view to hold. A conservative democrat can hold this belief, and many indeed do, however, they cannot claim to be leftists at that point, and most actually don’t. They may call them selves “moderate democrats” but I’ve never heard them call them selves “moderately left” (I’m willing to admit I’m wrong here if shown otherwise).
The leftist belief here is that systematic racism exists, and is the reason black people are disproportionately incarcerated. To reject this belief, isn’t a moderate version of the traditional leftist belief. It is counter to it. Therefor, if you reject the existence of systematic racism, you are not a moderate leftist, you simply aren’t a leftist.
I never claimed a leftist could or would hold any of these views. To the contrary I'm pointing out that leftism is such a fringe minority belief structure in the US that you can be a wildly popular mainstream Democrat, have a change at being elected President, and have the types of beliefs above and still have most of the country be more conservative to you.
From the very first comment:
> > > > I can think of a handful of things that the moderate American left would do / agree on that the more extreme elements would not
> > > > any of [these beliefs] ... would get you ostracized from [a] leftist group.
You prove both of my points beautifully in this thread as well as my new one that leftism is a radical fringe belief system when you say even suggesting there might be any other cause than racism for #5 is itself racism.
I never said anything was "a moderate version of a leftist belief," I'm not sure where exactly you got that.
One problem with this perspective is that the American left has adopted some views that a real leftist would have some disagreement with.
Point 1 is picking a side in an ongoing war in which both side have committed many atrocities. A real leftist would acknowledge this and seek an end to the conflict in solidarity with the victims on both sides. And consider that for a war that is mostly led by groups of aggressive men, the main victims of this are women and children.
Point 2 should be considered in the context of for-profit healthcare providers and their aim of maximising profit and creating repeat customers. There is a huge conflict of interest with many of those promoting their particular idea of "correct healthcare", as they profit off it. A real leftist would give much critical consideration to the capitalist and consumerist nature of the cosmetic surgeries and pharmaceutical interventions that are used in an attempt to make individuals appear to be the opposite sex.
Point 3 is something real leftists certainly do agree on but also to acknowledge there is a conflict of rights when it comes to single-sex spaces, and that it's important to listen to left-wing feminist voices on this topic rather than cede the discussion to meet the demands of males who desire to use female spaces.
Points 4, 5 and 6 do match up with the views of real leftists.
You can listen to the thing I posted. I think he crystalized really well how unfettered free speech is fundamentally a contradiction. So long as one party's speech can chill the speech of another (ie coordinated harassment or doxxing of trans influencers) then site owners are going to be obligated to pick a side and limit some kinds of speech. That just sounds like logic to me.
The company was created just a couple of weeks ago with the purpose of buying The Onion. It doesn’t sound like the CEO responsibilities will take a lot of time away from his other work.
I'm not sure I'd call it good reporting to investigate this case and not look into Doxbin.
There has been no evidence that Kiwifarms users have coordinated harassment towards keffals; however, the website that actually coordinated the harassment gets absolutely no mention.
When the reporter brings up the Uber hack, he's insinuating that this was done by Kiwifarms, but the receipts were actually posted on Doxbin. Doxbin also goes much much further than Kiwifarms, getting addresses,bank details, and employment history of anyone related to the target. They will work together to contact hotels and employers to get the information they want. Doxbin actually does act the way the media thinks that kiwifarms act.
I can understand Keffals not speaking about Doxbin as she legitimately fears them according to leaked messages to Destiny, but it's the media's responsibility to actually understand what's going on.
It's insane that people like Ben Collins constantly use Kiwifarms as a shield for Doxbin.
> When asked whether he had purchased The Onion, Lawson played coy. "What's The Onion?" he replied. Then, "What's a Tetrahedron?" Business Insider was unsure how to respond to these questions.
They may also have been victimized by the scandal where Facebook was lying about the engagement that short-form videos generated over other kinds of content, leading several content producers into bankruptcy or near bankruptcy through loss of ad revenue when they pivoted towards it.
From what I gather, they invested in Onion News Network for IFC, and when that got canceled relatively quickly, they didn't risk online-only distribution. Maybe 2011 was too early to pivot to video? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_News_Network
My favorite bit, still stuck in my head whenever I see politicians from both parties rush to the scene of a protest or whatever, is "New Live Poll Lets Pundits Pander To Viewers In Real Time": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFpK_r-jEXg
Ben Collins, the guy who got suspended from MSNBC for criticizing Elon Musk too hard? Upset Nate Silver because he criticized him too hard? Upset Matt Taibbi for making fun of him for doing PR work for a billionaire? I think he’s perfect for the job honestly.
If _MSNBC_ thinks he’s too overtly partisan and not up to journalistic standards, I’d say Collins fails to clear the absolute lowest bar in news media ethics.
Boy do I have to warn you about The Onion’s content then.
Also if you think being partisan is the lowest bar instead of “report the truth” or “be accurate and fair” then that tells me enough already about your values.
I don’t know who Ben Collins is and at a first read of his bio I’m not really sure who would. My first instinct is that this is one of those terminally online things, like how I kept reading references to “Taylor Lorenz” as if she were the devil incarnate and when I finally looked into it she was just another pretty boring journalist.
Since you asked, a genuine answer. I suspect it's because Ben Collins is a veteran of the left-wing "disinformation" beat, most recently for MSNBC until he lost that gig -- so the admittedly cryptic parent comment is positing that as a seasoned culture warrior, Collins will likely apply The Onion as a tool in the culture war.
The Onion's comedic point-of-view used to be less predictable, but as the culture war as progressed, so too has The Onion's voice, and it's a more reliable voice for the left these days. If you rue that trend, for whatever reason, Collins provides little reason to imagine things will change.
I don't know any of the context around that tweet, but The Onion has obviously chosen the most innocent, blameless celebrity they could think of to make sure it's a clear joke to everyone, right? Like finding the skinniest person and calling them obese.
The writer of that article seems to have still somehow misunderstood and come to the conclusion that The Onion actually hates Quvenzhané Wallis. I wonder if they really don't get it, or if they're just sort of performatively not getting it for the outrage article.
On the contrary, the context was that the kid was getting a lot of very stupid criticism already. It’s certainly why they attempted the joke.
I don’t think anything about that situation was somehow off limits or immune to satire, they just didn’t pull off the joke. It’s not like the kid was likely to have seen the joke, so no worries there. The problem is that when you use language like that and you’re not even funny, you’re operating at the Andrew Dice Clay level of comedy. That should inspire suicidal ideation in any comedian (who isn’t Andrew Dice Clay… I guess…).
They also seem to think their Diamond Joe Biden character made real Joe Biden too popular, and their self-seriousness about this is making it hard for them to do anything political.
You're clearly not alone in this, but I never realised they even did videos, fwiw. Similar era I was enjoying great content on the site, and it just sort of faded but didn't disappear, from my perspective, so I don't know to what extent it's purely about rise and fall of video really.
(I did just watch the very good MacBook Wheel one though.)
Missing from the Internet is "The Onion Guide to Actual Reality", a Flash based interactive feature from the 90s. It was brilliant and prescient like all good Onion features but it may never be ported to Ruffle or whatever else can render that content. Maybe Global Tetrahedron will invest in preserving some of that history.
Also, le boy picked up my copy of Our Dumb Century and read it cover to cover a few years ago. I was pleased.
This is the best birthday present I could have asked for. The Onion News Network has the funniest, most prescient videos online and I love going back to watch them. Even if the Onion comes back half as funny as they were it's going to be fabulous. Here are a few of my lesser-known favorites:
Reporters having a panel discussion on teevee. I stopped the video and read each of the supporting print stories that flashed by and they were perfect, too.
I watch "The Onion's Future News From The Year 2137" regularly. You have to pause it to catch everything, it's packed with little bits of humor in the on-screen graphics.
I guess it's cheaper than a real news site, and is there any difference anymore? Babylon Bee has become defacto news now. I don't mean this in terms of blaming the left or the right, but just that it's hard for any entity to have any monopoly on the truth anymore. Mainstream, established news sites have to compete against AI-generated content and influencers in the 'news space', which has blurred the lines between truth or fiction or made it hard to know what is real or not.
Sometimes stories can be true and and yet undisguisable from 'fake' news, hence why r/nottheoinion is a thing.
I have seen people on twitter post literal fake news, and it goes viral until later debunked or deleted, which can still take hours even with community notes. Even reputable news sites are still occasionally forced to amend or even outright retract stories. When something chaotic and unexpected happens for which narration is unreliable, like a school shooting, who is right? It's just speculation for the first hour or so until something approaching 'truth' or an 'official narrative' coalesces or congeals.
it's be awesome if the three ppl who downvoted my post could elaborate how i was wrong . It is possible I am way off and someone can guide me to the truth that I am missing here. I think communication is helpful for resolving differences and maybe someone can communicate how I erred that would be more helpful. Thanks.
I wish that there was an equivalent to The Onion with a different political slant, but the quality of the writing in all of the Onion copycats is just plain bad. The Babylon Bee is awful.
I was thinking of the one they got kicked off twitter for-
"The Babylon Bee's Man Of The Year Is Rachel Levine"
featuring gems like
"UPDATE: Since announcing this award, we've been told that Levine actually identifies as a woman. We have still chosen to give the award as his self-identification has no bearing on the truth. Congratulations, Rachel Levine!"
Exactly! Comedians aren’t funny when they have opinions. They’re only funny when they tell jokes that are carefully calculated not to make anyone upset about anything.
I’d say there’s a difference between expressing an opinion, and moralizing about it. One can make great comedy with the former, while the latter sucks because the comedy is completely subjugated by the message. It’s the same difference between heavy metal and Christian metal. Same instruments, same basslines, etc., except the latter is trying to push you towards belief, and thus it’s annoying.
I think this is good news, because G/O Media websites are the worst.
I was at UW-Madison when The Onion started. We had a wealth of student newspapers at the time, along with The Daily Cardinal and The Badger Herald. Scott Dikkers and Todd Hanson, writers for The Onion, also wrote great comic strips for the Cardinal (Jim's Journal and Badgers and Other Animals, respectively).
And I can't find a link for it, but "Special Olympics T-Ball Stand Pitches Perfect Game".
Incidentally, Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept was also writing for the student newspapers way back in the day, though he was obviously doing political stuff and not comedy.
It would have been a vastly different story if only Cosgrove kept her mouth shut about access to the new all-weather Sedgwick County Park municipal pool.
Pool politics have torn America apart.
Here in Australia we have to make do with The Shovel
British conservative, I think it’s hilarious if sweary, but that’s just Australians. Outside the US conservatism and Trump support are, shall we say, loosely coupled. More British conservatives would prefer a Biden victory to a Trump one (40% to 31%).
I was there too and I remember thinking that lots of universities must have humor newspapers as funny as The Onion. Nope!
BTW Dan Vebber also wrote a strip for the Daily Cardinal and wrote for The Onion. He went on to write for Buffy and a lot of other shows, currently exec. producer of The Simpsons. He’s also the genius behind The Two Felipes https://www.mkepunk.com/releases/the-two-felipes-eat-your-fi...
This is great news. Jim Spanfeller and G/O media are pretty well known as a chop shop for media properties - there's not a single part of the former Gawker empire that's done even half-decently under their control.
> In an email to G/O Media staff that was obtained by The New York Times, Jim Spanfeller, the chief executive, said the company was “undergoing an extensive review of our portfolio with the intention of coring down to our leading sites in terms of audience and revenues.”
Gawker put a bunch of famous sites together, but The Onion is the only one that I'd expect anyone who wasn't terminally online to recognize. I'm not sure how that didn't make their list of "leading sites", but I'm grateful.
There's a bit of vicarious schadenfreude that Spanfeller's tactics were so horrific that nearly all the staff of G/O media from before 2020 abandoned ship and went on to create sites that are more successful than what the staff escaped from. Some even went on to be major journalists for massive publications, like Tyler Rogoway and Jason Schreier. The Onion has been the last holdout because it's a storied name, unlike Jalopnik or The Root, and now it's finally free.
Anyone aware of an archive for each of their stories? Not the entire website/home page archive. Would love this in markdown format for an eInk story-a-day, etc.
Well, not like the onion could get any worse (frankly) so I’m hopeful. I think this world would do fine with a bit more self depreciating and satirical humor.
I used to love it. But in recent years, they only ever seem to make fun of Republican and rarely Democrats. I'd prefer to see them shit on everyone, because they all deserve it.
In recent years one of the two parties was taken over by a reality show host blowhard with no impulse control or self awareness. It would be weird if the media didn't capitalize on that with extra attention.
The worst idea of our time is that there's some sort of law or balance in the universe preventing one party from ever deserving more criticism than the other because there's at all times some sort of magical fixed equivalence or symmetry to their dysfunction.
Sometimes a guy who tweets all day, pays off porn stars, and has to pay $25 million for having run a fake university is just funnier. That's Occam's razor. Pretending there's full dignity in that would be a kind of participation trophy.
“The worst idea of our time is that there’s some sort of law or balance in the Universe preventing one party from ever deserving more criticism than the other.” lol - this sounds alot like the lady who said,"i cant understand how George Bush won, i dont know a single person who voted for him"
Hopefully we will see more periodicals, social
media, and comics taking on the far left - between the doddering old man, his dippy VP, and all the weird identity politics theyve mustered up, the jokes write themselves. The Onion cant be any worse.
* Biden Carried Away By Ants
* Janet Yellen Unveils Plan To Boost Economy By Stealing World’s Largest Diamond
* Congress Quickly Passes Funding For National Night-Light After Waking Up From Scary Dream
* Biden Surges In Polls After Convincing Terrified Voters He Causing Eclipse
* Biden: ‘Israel Has An Obligation Not To Harm My Reelection Chances’
* What Trump Will Do On His First Day In Office
* Trump Warns Of Electric Vehicles Raping, Murdering Americans
* Kamala Harris Joins D.C. Coworking Space
By my count, that's five stories with a Democrat as the principal character (three specifically for Biden), two with a Republican/Trump, and one mocking Congress as an institution.
That being said, looking through the recent archive it seems like these things come in waves, with a series of stories targeting Republicans (mostly Trump), followed by a few in a row that go after Biden or Harris.
I remember my first introduction to the onion was the print edition at my university. What a great publication- and they authored what has to be the best amicus brief to the Supreme Court ever. https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022...
They penned two briefs, the one you linked to was never filed with the court (it “sides” with the police). The one they filed with the court is different. You can read about it here and both are linked: https://reason.com/volokh/2022/10/28/babylon-bee-files-amicu...
310 comments
[ 5.8 ms ] story [ 277 ms ] threadI regret never actually meeting him though we have some mutual friends in common. Tried to get him to speak at a hackathon I was running in Detroit during his early days at Twilio but he was simply too busy which I can understand. Got Dug Song, cofounder of Duo Security, and he did a terrific job of inspiring all of us.
> When asked whether he had purchased The Onion, Lawson played coy. "What's The Onion?" he replied. Then, "What's a Tetrahedron?"
> Business Insider was unsure how to respond to these questions.
This article is absolute gold, thanks for sharing haha
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/worst-plac...
Can’t you express your opinion in a way that isn’t antagonistic?
I grew up on a cattle station in the Nor'west.
I'm downvoting your comments for their strong foaming at the mouth unhinged vibes, and I'd do the same if they ranted in a similar manner against some other part of US culture.
I dare say you could make a comment with fewer empty buzz phrases if you tried.
Were B&S Balls a thing there then? (the food dye may not exactly be elegant, but it is reminiscent of Carnival)
Lot's of burnouts, circle work, lube slides, burning wrecks, food dye, and actual ball in a tent, fire engines, drinking, limousines (both real hires and "bush mechanic" stretched tractors), etc.
Being so far away I either flew in from the Kimberleys or hitch hiked across from Perth to go to a couple.
This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH_RWBSQ9ic seems 'typical' of part of the weekend.
Not dead yet, it seems: https://www.sistersanguinista.com/bns
Looks very reminiscent[0] of Carnival[1], except not seasonal, no utes[2], and we have very few bogans or muppets[3] so ours are usually urban[4]. Also, confetti[5] instead of food colouring.
(good that Sister Sanguinista has a way to relax; people-helping jobs, like vet practice, seem to be a real ticket to burnout)
[0] especially the slogan "where the rams get used and the ewes get rammed"
[1] some balls are held for charity, and some for fancy dress[6], but holding them for pleasure is the course which we profess.
[2] boots and roots, yes. Does "pull" originate from pulling someone into your swag?
[3] coming from an anglophone culture, I was amazed that instead of making "glass pinecones"[7], everyone, despite elevated BAC, piles their dead soldiers in ranks by the recycle bins.
[4] if you're into Analogue Dance Music, there's nothing quite like doof doof in a medieval guild hall or old town alleyway[8]. The recent shopping malls are not so scenic, and the roman coliseums are historic but are too open for gut-felt acoustics.
[5] there's a song somewhere on YT by a young dutch lady about how Karneval is wonderful but it still is a little annoying, mornings, to be picking the confetti out of your pubic hair — with enough compressed air, one can send confetti tens of meters into 2nd storey windows. (we colour our faces via airbrush, and use markers only on exposed skin)
Speaking of exposed skin, some of those blokes might could be risking the worst sunburns of their lives.
[6] this advert version looks a bit different to your unscripted clip: "are you getting enough?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQBc2dmUiHs
[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RShAxvg5MJE
[8] see Schroeder, Fractals, chaos, power laws : minutes from an infinite paradise (1999) for why.
> If the female is receptive, she will stand for mating. So that we know when a ewe has been mated, we place a coloured liquid underneath the ewe or place a harness on the tup which hold a coloured crayon. We change the colour at certain intervals so we know who has been mated when. This explains why you see sheep with different coloured bottoms all over Yorkshire!
EDIT: and I guess the B&S was part of the answer to this 1959 question?
> An American psychologist, Mrs Graham Bell, said she wondered how Australian men and women ever got together enough to get married. But it is not true that Ordinary Australians fail to recognise the value of women. Any man will tell you they are indispensable for packing picnic-baskets, and for keeping other women company while you are drinking with their husbands
The only reason the god n guns lobby wins in the US is 1. the constitutional settlement which massively overweights rural voters and 2. corporate lobbying in a winner takes all system which is prepared to hold its nose and bankroll racist hicks if it means they get their corporate welfare.
You are a great nation, but very little that anyone admires about the US has come from the flyover states (and even then probably because of federal pork barrel science and defence funding for those educated elites you hate so much).
Why do you think stripping resources from the police was so popular amongst upper class intectuals but not what black Americans actually wanted according to the actual data. Progressivism in America is an ideology that represents the upper class, not minorities nor traditional liberals nor the working class.
Yet you use them offhandedly like synonyms. It gives your response an air of propaganda and FUD.
The point you’re making about Collins suffers because you only labelled him an “extreme leftist”, over and over again, without examples of this behavior. So I went looking, myself. Apparently he was pulled off Twitter coverage because he made posts mocking Elon Musk for suspending the accounts of other journalists. While this might be too opinionated for a professional whose beat includes Musk, it isn’t evidence of “extreme left” views.
> Collins has been yanked off the air from NBC and MSNBC but remains on staff. He has been actively tweeting and retweeting the latest developments related to Musk’s controversial decision to ban the accounts of several left-leaning journalists who were critical of his management of the social media app.
https://nypost.com/2022/12/16/nbc-suspends-ben-collins-for-m...
I hope you will concede that the NY Post has not yet fallen to left-wing extremism.
Labeling critics as “extremist”, without evidence, and attempting to make it stick through sheer repetition, is itself a tactic of extremists.
I'm not a Kyle Rittenhouse supporter, I merely held that he didn't commit murder which is what many legal experts held as well.
Fwiw my actual policy and culture positions are much more aligned with liberalism when its pragmatic and not pathological altruism.
I'm happy to provide references on ben collins bias, he has been called out multiple times for spreading misinformation despite claiming to be an expert on it.
He has been objectively criticized by multiple legit journalists like glenn greenwald and even moderates like nate silver.
https://reason.com/2023/10/19/ben-collins-disinformation-hos...
https://nypost.com/2023/10/20/nate-silver-rips-ny-times-nbcs...
1. If you don’t want Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza to stop, you are not a leftist.
2. If you don’t want trans children to get correct healthcare, you are not a leftist.
3. If you want to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people, you are not a leftist.
4. If you don’t want to fix the gender wage gap, you are not a leftist.
5. If you hold racist views, you are not a leftist.
6. The radical left has many different views on taxes. I want to eat the rich, but many on the left do indeed want taxes only to be used as funding of social services.
I’m aware I’m committing No true Scotsman fallacy here. However I don’t see people that hold these views to align anywhere close to me politically—not even moderately. On the left we call people that hold these views conservative democrats, and at best we call them centrists, never moderate leftists. The only people that call them “moderates” are the conservative democrats them selves (and maybe some republicans).
I’m also aware that there is a (very small) faction of communists and tankies, particularly in the UK, which holds anti-trans and racist views, and would agree with points 2, 3, and 5, however, even among communists, they are very niche and still very extreme, so definitely not moderate American left.
You have literally zero legitimacy or authority to define what leftism is, it doesn't belong to you.
Me as a leftist does not want to be politically aligned with anti-LGBTQ+, anti-feminists, and racists. These aren’t a moderate versions of my and my comrade political beliefs (except the 6th one), they are counter to them. So, as a radical leftist, I do disavow these claims, and don’t want them anywhere near me on the political spectrum.
Edit: to clarify i mean the view points that disagreed with the 6 up above.
I would never want to be in a monoculture where those view points are censored or shut down. It has unfortunately become more common in authoritarian states and even peaceful protests here on campuses.
I mean in another comment you refer to yourself as "a radical leftist" so that sort of proves my point. The points above can be held by liberal, left-of-center politicians who have a chance at holding national political office in the US. Mainstream Democrats, or at least what used to be a mainstream Democrat 10 years ago.
> There are root causes to the disproportionate incarceration of African Americans that do not boil down to "the system is racist."
To claim that there are other root causes then systematic racism behind mass incarceration of black people, is placing a lot of heavy lifting on the other. It is reasonable to assume that a person holding this belief means “cultural” or, worse, “biological”. In either case, it is a racist view to hold. A conservative democrat can hold this belief, and many indeed do, however, they cannot claim to be leftists at that point, and most actually don’t. They may call them selves “moderate democrats” but I’ve never heard them call them selves “moderately left” (I’m willing to admit I’m wrong here if shown otherwise).
The leftist belief here is that systematic racism exists, and is the reason black people are disproportionately incarcerated. To reject this belief, isn’t a moderate version of the traditional leftist belief. It is counter to it. Therefor, if you reject the existence of systematic racism, you are not a moderate leftist, you simply aren’t a leftist.
From the very first comment:
> > > > I can think of a handful of things that the moderate American left would do / agree on that the more extreme elements would not
> > > > any of [these beliefs] ... would get you ostracized from [a] leftist group.
You prove both of my points beautifully in this thread as well as my new one that leftism is a radical fringe belief system when you say even suggesting there might be any other cause than racism for #5 is itself racism.
I never said anything was "a moderate version of a leftist belief," I'm not sure where exactly you got that.
Point 1 is picking a side in an ongoing war in which both side have committed many atrocities. A real leftist would acknowledge this and seek an end to the conflict in solidarity with the victims on both sides. And consider that for a war that is mostly led by groups of aggressive men, the main victims of this are women and children.
Point 2 should be considered in the context of for-profit healthcare providers and their aim of maximising profit and creating repeat customers. There is a huge conflict of interest with many of those promoting their particular idea of "correct healthcare", as they profit off it. A real leftist would give much critical consideration to the capitalist and consumerist nature of the cosmetic surgeries and pharmaceutical interventions that are used in an attempt to make individuals appear to be the opposite sex.
Point 3 is something real leftists certainly do agree on but also to acknowledge there is a conflict of rights when it comes to single-sex spaces, and that it's important to listen to left-wing feminist voices on this topic rather than cede the discussion to meet the demands of males who desire to use female spaces.
Points 4, 5 and 6 do match up with the views of real leftists.
When the reporter brings up the Uber hack, he's insinuating that this was done by Kiwifarms, but the receipts were actually posted on Doxbin. Doxbin also goes much much further than Kiwifarms, getting addresses,bank details, and employment history of anyone related to the target. They will work together to contact hotels and employers to get the information they want. Doxbin actually does act the way the media thinks that kiwifarms act.
I can understand Keffals not speaking about Doxbin as she legitimately fears them according to leaked messages to Destiny, but it's the media's responsibility to actually understand what's going on.
It's insane that people like Ben Collins constantly use Kiwifarms as a shield for Doxbin.
Got a good article of his on this specifically?
Sounds like The Onion is in good hands.
I wonder why they stopped.
They may also have been victimized by the scandal where Facebook was lying about the engagement that short-form videos generated over other kinds of content, leading several content producers into bankruptcy or near bankruptcy through loss of ad revenue when they pivoted towards it.
https://slate.com/technology/2018/10/facebook-online-video-p...
https://www.ccn.com/facebook-lied-about-video-metrics/
My favorite bit, still stuck in my head whenever I see politicians from both parties rush to the scene of a protest or whatever, is "New Live Poll Lets Pundits Pander To Viewers In Real Time": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFpK_r-jEXg
The whole pivot to video era that crippled a whole bunch of online writing outlets was still four years out, so definitely too early.
lets collate the best of the best. i'll start:
https://www.theonion.com/protagonist-scrolls-intensely-throu...
https://www.theonion.com/jumbled-nest-of-cords-makes-move-to...
> Congress approves intellectual stimulus package giving every American a graduate degree
https://bsky.app/profile/bencollins.bsky.social/post/3kqyj7u...
This will not not be a return to The Onion you fondly remember. Most likely it will be a continuation in the same direction it's been going.
Also if you think being partisan is the lowest bar instead of “report the truth” or “be accurate and fair” then that tells me enough already about your values.
I don’t know who Ben Collins is and at a first read of his bio I’m not really sure who would. My first instinct is that this is one of those terminally online things, like how I kept reading references to “Taylor Lorenz” as if she were the devil incarnate and when I finally looked into it she was just another pretty boring journalist.
The Onion's comedic point-of-view used to be less predictable, but as the culture war as progressed, so too has The Onion's voice, and it's a more reliable voice for the left these days. If you rue that trend, for whatever reason, Collins provides little reason to imagine things will change.
'Little Boy Heroically Shoots, Mutilates Burglar'
'Black Man given Nation's worst job' (After Obama won)
I've never laughed so hard at headlines
OG writers refusing to relocate from NYC to Chicago in 2012 when the HQ was moved, choosing to part ways instead.
Then, the remaining writers being called out for the following tweet, somewhat rightly, but being neutered forever after:
https://crasstalk.com/2013/02/sorry-former-onion-staffers-ca...
The writer of that article seems to have still somehow misunderstood and come to the conclusion that The Onion actually hates Quvenzhané Wallis. I wonder if they really don't get it, or if they're just sort of performatively not getting it for the outrage article.
I don’t think anything about that situation was somehow off limits or immune to satire, they just didn’t pull off the joke. It’s not like the kid was likely to have seen the joke, so no worries there. The problem is that when you use language like that and you’re not even funny, you’re operating at the Andrew Dice Clay level of comedy. That should inspire suicidal ideation in any comedian (who isn’t Andrew Dice Clay… I guess…).
https://www.theonion.com/black-man-given-nations-worst-job-1...
(I did just watch the very good MacBook Wheel one though.)
It feels like there's a big hollowed out void between hackneyed mass appeal, and full sending to absurdist and surreal comedy.
https://www.theonion.com/give-us-1-or-the-onion-disappears-f...
Also, le boy picked up my copy of Our Dumb Century and read it cover to cover a few years ago. I was pleased.
More expensive, weird projects that are essentially public art.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJdP1zK15bE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRgRz3nSG7o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUT8ec24anM
"Rescue St. Bernard eats avalanche victim"
https://youtu.be/7ADncN9HIa4
“Concentric Circles Emanating from Glowing Red Dot”
https://youtu.be/8wHMaJ6AtNs?si=GMQSQDYXbTQfGEI9
https://youtu.be/-Uq9pp586AE?si=NxdI4vwYZQr817QI
Reporters having a panel discussion on teevee. I stopped the video and read each of the supporting print stories that flashed by and they were perfect, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKC21wDarBo
Sometimes stories can be true and and yet undisguisable from 'fake' news, hence why r/nottheoinion is a thing.
I have seen people on twitter post literal fake news, and it goes viral until later debunked or deleted, which can still take hours even with community notes. Even reputable news sites are still occasionally forced to amend or even outright retract stories. When something chaotic and unexpected happens for which narration is unreliable, like a school shooting, who is right? It's just speculation for the first hour or so until something approaching 'truth' or an 'official narrative' coalesces or congeals.
it's be awesome if the three ppl who downvoted my post could elaborate how i was wrong . It is possible I am way off and someone can guide me to the truth that I am missing here. I think communication is helpful for resolving differences and maybe someone can communicate how I erred that would be more helpful. Thanks.
Hamas Thanks College Student Supporters By Promising Them A Quick Death During Global Intifada
College Student So Caught Up Harassing Jews He Forgot About Term Paper On Inclusion
This is one of my favorites from recent years, both funny and really gets to the point:
NCAA Swimming Champ Caught In Possession Of Performance-Enhancing Testicles
1. Babylon Bee has like 1 good article for every 20-30 lame ones and in general spreads anti-trans hate. It is not news
& 2. fake news is a problem, but fake news doesn't make the onion no different from a real news site. that's silly
Hmm, how do you define that? They make fun of trans issues sometimes, but that's not 'spreading hate' in my books.
A sibling comment gives an example headline:
NCAA Swimming Champ Caught In Possession Of Performance-Enhancing Testicles
"The Babylon Bee's Man Of The Year Is Rachel Levine"
featuring gems like "UPDATE: Since announcing this award, we've been told that Levine actually identifies as a woman. We have still chosen to give the award as his self-identification has no bearing on the truth. Congratulations, Rachel Levine!"
Playful: Leo Moracchioli feat. Mary Spender Sultans of Swing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0RV0kgdqJU
It's not like the Church of Satan is actually pushing an agenda to make anybody believe in an actual Satan.
obrigado!
Fear of the Dark (QQT) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td3c5rNFLew
Jim's Journal started in the late 80s, by the way.
(No beef, here, just very hard to resist in context - mea culpa for my frivolity)
> Jim's Journal is a comic strip written and drawn by Scott Dikkers, co-founder of The Onion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim%27s_Journal
Take it up with Jimmy Wales.
The image and the style that you're used to
All you had to do was give Jeff a chance And now I'm gonna do my dance
And to the Onion readers Peace and Humptiness forever
I tried to explain to my wife why I bought that shirt. No comprende...
(YES... HA HA HA... YES!)
I was at UW-Madison when The Onion started. We had a wealth of student newspapers at the time, along with The Daily Cardinal and The Badger Herald. Scott Dikkers and Todd Hanson, writers for The Onion, also wrote great comic strips for the Cardinal (Jim's Journal and Badgers and Other Animals, respectively).
Some favorite Onion headlines that I remember:
https://www.theonion.com/stretch-of-highway-learns-it-was-ad...
https://www.theonion.com/sudanese-14-year-old-has-midlife-cr...
https://www.theonion.com/christ-returns-to-nba-1819563859
And I can't find a link for it, but "Special Olympics T-Ball Stand Pitches Perfect Game".
Incidentally, Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept was also writing for the student newspapers way back in the day, though he was obviously doing political stuff and not comedy.
Pool politics have torn America apart.
Here in Australia we have to make do with The Shovel
https://theshovel.com.au/2024/04/24/rest-of-world-offers-tru...
I did a quick household poll and, sadly, not one found your comment funny regardless of political affiliation, gender, or species :/
Even the dog yawned.
https://www.theonion.com/god-finally-gives-shout-out-back-to...
And a brutal Special Olympics article:
https://www.theonion.com/independent-investigation-special-o...
https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/clinton-deploys-v...
Cities of Sjlbvdnzv, Grzny to Be First Recipients
Drugs win Drug War
New President Feels Nation's Pain, Breasts
Area Man Passionate Defender of What He Imagines Constitution to Be
Awesome Toy Recalled Thanks to Three Stupid Dead Kids
Ninja Parade Slips Through Town Unnoticed Once Again
Alzheimer's Sufferers Demand Cure For Pancakes
https://www.theonion.com/the-onions-1997-man-of-the-year-181...
Archaeological Dig Uncovers Ancient Race Of Skeleton People - https://www.theonion.com/archaeological-dig-uncovers-ancient...
Study: Dolphins Not So Intelligent On Land - https://www.theonion.com/study-dolphins-not-so-intelligent-o...
https://www.theonion.com/area-man-always-nostalgic-for-four-...
"Schaumburg Man Dimly Aware Of Shadowy, Non-Schaumburg World Out There"
"Clinton Injected With Highly Unstable Experimental Growth Serum"
"Beer! It kicks ass!"
Lastly, the 9/11 issue is one of their greatest achievements. They struck the perfect balance/tone, avoiding "too soon": https://www.theonion.com/issue-37-34-the-september-11th-issu...
https://www.theonion.com/cia-realizes-its-been-using-black-h...
They also had one that they didn’t run making a joke right after 9/11 to the effect of…
“America Stronger Than Ever, Say Quadragon Officials."
Also the routine “No Way To Prevent This” headline after every mass shooting only continues to gain potency.
https://www.theonion.com/after-obama-victory-shrieking-white...
Which is a shame, because it was the perfect counterpoint to what everybody else was reporting.
Just a full page photo of the plane hitting the tower and a giant headline:
“HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!”
"More American Workers Outsourcing Own Jobs Overseas"
https://www.theonion.com/more-american-workers-outsourcing-o...
BTW Dan Vebber also wrote a strip for the Daily Cardinal and wrote for The Onion. He went on to write for Buffy and a lot of other shows, currently exec. producer of The Simpsons. He’s also the genius behind The Two Felipes https://www.mkepunk.com/releases/the-two-felipes-eat-your-fi...
https://www.theonion.com/issue-37-34-the-september-11th-issu...
"I'll Try Anything With A Detached Air Of Superiority"
https://www.theonion.com/ill-try-anything-with-a-detached-ai...
> Little League Pitcher Just Getting Fucking Shelled
https://www.theonion.com/archaeological-dig-uncovers-ancient...
"Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Fillm as Fun, Watchable"
https://www.theonion.com/trekkies-bash-new-star-trek-film-as...
"Jurisprudence Fetishist Gets off on Technicality"
https://www.theonion.com/jurisprudence-fetishist-gets-off-on...
> In an email to G/O Media staff that was obtained by The New York Times, Jim Spanfeller, the chief executive, said the company was “undergoing an extensive review of our portfolio with the intention of coring down to our leading sites in terms of audience and revenues.”
Gawker put a bunch of famous sites together, but The Onion is the only one that I'd expect anyone who wasn't terminally online to recognize. I'm not sure how that didn't make their list of "leading sites", but I'm grateful.
(Also, Jim Spanfeller is a herb.)
The worst idea of our time is that there's some sort of law or balance in the universe preventing one party from ever deserving more criticism than the other because there's at all times some sort of magical fixed equivalence or symmetry to their dysfunction.
Sometimes a guy who tweets all day, pays off porn stars, and has to pay $25 million for having run a fake university is just funnier. That's Occam's razor. Pretending there's full dignity in that would be a kind of participation trophy.
Hopefully we will see more periodicals, social media, and comics taking on the far left - between the doddering old man, his dippy VP, and all the weird identity politics theyve mustered up, the jokes write themselves. The Onion cant be any worse.
* Biden Carried Away By Ants * Janet Yellen Unveils Plan To Boost Economy By Stealing World’s Largest Diamond * Congress Quickly Passes Funding For National Night-Light After Waking Up From Scary Dream * Biden Surges In Polls After Convincing Terrified Voters He Causing Eclipse * Biden: ‘Israel Has An Obligation Not To Harm My Reelection Chances’ * What Trump Will Do On His First Day In Office * Trump Warns Of Electric Vehicles Raping, Murdering Americans * Kamala Harris Joins D.C. Coworking Space
By my count, that's five stories with a Democrat as the principal character (three specifically for Biden), two with a Republican/Trump, and one mocking Congress as an institution.
That being said, looking through the recent archive it seems like these things come in waves, with a series of stories targeting Republicans (mostly Trump), followed by a few in a row that go after Biden or Harris.
It's probably the funniest amicus brief ever written. Thanks for linking.