Can't believe someone would donate such nice church clothes.

https://www.propublica.org/article/doge-musk-mohammad-halimi-institute-peace-taliban

I'm hearing a lot about declining birth rates and is that really such a bad thing?

Have any of these pearl clutchers sat in 405 traffic recently? Or seen the massive suburban sprawl or gone hiking in mount ranier on a weekend? Or are they ben Shapiros that never go outside?

I don’t know if everyone is aware of a religious cult called “The children of god” but I found something really shocking to say the least. For context The children of god was a religious cult run by David berg, he recruited hippies around the United States and once he had a mass following he instructed them to move out of the United States because he claimed God would destroy the USA. Once he had his people settled in commune homes in different countries he started adding his principles and teachings about sex including children. He would force them to do inappropriate things with each other. This is where Richard Harold shillander comes in. There was video broadcast which I’ll add here along with info on Richard : https://youtu.be/-sjlqhN2fPY?si=21pqUaJKRfSeAECS

https://www.xfamily.org/index.php/Vivian_Shillander

The broadcast followed a woman named Vivian lyn shillander who was a mother of four, she escaped the cult but she left her 4 children behind with her ex husband Richard. Richard was very abusive towards Vivian and her kids. He would often hit his couple month old children so hard they would bleed. It got so bad that Vivian decided to leave but she wasn’t allowed to take her children only her newborn, The cult and most likely her husband refused to give her children back. Members of the cult would receive letters and media which showed and talked about child s$x, they told parents to show these things to their children. This cult brainwashed children and you’ll see what kind of trauma that leaves on the kids. Long story short Vivian tracks down her kids and with help of the government giving her custody of the kids and private investigators, she successfully reunites and brings her children back to the U.S.

I got interested to see how the family is doing now and I tried researching any new info about their lives when I found something really shocking and sad. Vivian had 4 children April, Tito, Caleb, and John. I found that Caleb had died in 2006 on a Facebook post.His death a suicide. I’ve never met him and I can’t say for sure what made him do it but something common in the children of god victims is suicide. These kids experienced sexual abuse and trauma right when they were born and it must have been hard growing up realizing what happened to you was wrong. That can be a lot for a kid. It’s important to know that in the broadcast Richard was interviewed and asked about the teachings involving children and he says” it’s fun to see kids experiencing life” as he calls it. I don’t know about you but that’s disgusting. This man taught his children things no father should teach and instead of protecting his children he hurt them mentally and physically. As for the other siblings, I was able to find pictures of them today as adults, I hope they’re okay and doing well, I know it must have been difficult dealing with something like that. Richard is a different case, he’s now ceo of a company called XTIRI. He’s currently married to the same Thailand woman who took care of Caleb and his sibling when they were under Richard’s care in Thailand. I just wanted to talk about this case and sorry if this post was long and I appreciate you if you read all the way. New information about the children of god cult stopped being published and it seems the world has just forgot about it. Victims were mostly ashamed to come forward with information or they wanted to leave it all behind. I feel sorry for all the victims and I hope they’re doing better and living amazing life’s. I can’t stop to feel that Richard is the reason his son is dead, that’s probably wrong of me to say as I don’t know if he ever apologized or talked to his children after the cult died down. But it still doesn’t excuse his actions especially when he makes Facebook post talking about his sons passing like he had no part in it. Let me know your thoughts.

Heya,

My dad self identifies as a marxist-leninist conspiracy theorist with a love of raunchy humor and weird history. Sadly, he's basically brainwashed himself into becoming an "anti-woke" accelerationist with an incoherent political ideology which I honestly don't have the energy to get into right now. I've noticed that he's started to become more quiet about and unsure of his beliefs after some political developments and changes in family circumstances (i.e. he's starting to realize that this isn't a game), and I'd like to use this as an opportunity to steer him away from the online media encouraging his more reactionary tendencies.

I think this show would be perfect for doing that, but he's a massive contrarian and I worry that he'll immediately bounce off of it if he gets the sense that it's "woke" too quickly. I think he'd genuinely love the show, so I'm hoping that getting him hooked on it first will make him more open to self-examination when he inevitably lands on an episode with more explicitly progressive messaging.

So, does anyone have any recommendations for episodes that have basically nothing to do with current events, and/or which don't really involve anything that a tankie would consider "woke"? Dark subject matter is fine.

I appreciate any and all suggestions.

I'm on a US trip and found this on a bus. I didn't know they still made those!

Also, is Jack Chick a good candidate for an episode?

”It would be a huge step forward for Democrats and for general clarity in political writing if these terms went away. These came mostly from academic hothouses.”

I’m sorry I just gotta get something off my chest.

“The unhoused”

“Food insecurity”

And these are the people that say Dems need to talk about “table topic” issues, bread and butter issues, issues that affect “real” America (aka rich Cis Het white christian men)

You want to talk about hunger, and we are talking about hunger. But you are angry at how we phrase it? You are pissed about us saying “food insecurity” rather than “hunger”??

We use a slightly different term for the same thing, but that’s where they draw the line?

Some “swing voter” from Wisconsin is going to go “oh, I wanted to talk about child hunger, but I don’t like the term ‘food insecure’. I will talk to Dems, but only when they use the correct terminology that I like”

As for the “incarcerated” and LGBTQIA+

We have 1.23 MILLION people incarcerated at this moment. We have more people incarcerated than every single person who lives in Iceland. About 3X more to be exact.

There are more than 2 Wyoming’s worth of people incarcerated at this moment.

This is from 2010:

”The study estimates that as of 2010 there were 19 million people in the U.S. that have a felony record, including those who have been to prison, jail or on felony probation”

That’s 2010. It’s been 15 years. Certainly more people have been arrested.

There are more people with a felony record in the US than there are people in the entire state of New York. They would be in the top 5 populated states if felons had their own state.

Yet the vast majority of them will get ZERO representation because in most states felons can’t vote.

19+ million people. That’s a lot of fucking people.

Now for LGBTQIA+:

There are 4.8 MILLION lesbians in the United States. Coal miners make up about 43,000 people total. But all conservatives want to talk about coal miners. Conservatives hate minority politics except when it comes to THEIR minority.

You want to talk about minorities? West Virginia has 60,000 lgbt people. Sure in fuck a lot more than all coal miners combined.

But out of touch elitist democratic strategists want Dems to go talk about coal in West Virginia to get votes back.

I’m sorry but the Dems have got to stop listening to people like him.

https://news.uga.edu/total-us-population-with-felony-convictions/

https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/icymi-gallup-poll-finds-almost-1-in-10-in-u-s-identify-as-lgbtq-a-record-amount

https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/LGBT-Adult-US-Pop-Dec-2023.pdf

He was a very convinced dem and had a very good relationship with Kerry I think. Other than a minor cabinet job is he getting something else under the table to switch because only the job seems to be frankly not worth all the trouble , his career is over in both parties anyway.

I don’t know why, but this “joke” has been stuck in my head ever since Robert described him saying it.

Hello. I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I know when Gaiman's sex pest a allegations came out, it was discussed in here. Because I had a slight break down and really didn't want to believe it (he was my favorite author, to the point I got a quote of his tattoo on my back), so yeah. It I believed the women, it was just trying to wrap my head around they he did those things. (Honestly, I've read all the articles, but I still have listened to the podcast). So my question to you my fellow BtB listeners, would you watch it. First season was wonderful. Then we found out he is a fucking creep. More than a creep. I don't know how much he ended up being involved with the second season, or anything and I kind of want to watch it, and I kind of feel like ick. And I know we have much more pressing things happening right now, but if I do not take a break from said pressing things, my brain is going to melt.

And screaming Cesaire! Arendt! at their phone?

Aime Cesaire was a Martinique born black (descendent of slaves), and way back in 1950 he described Fascism as 'Colonialism comes to the Metropole'. Arendt picked up on that and called it the Imperial Boomerang: all of the techniques and people trained in imperialism now using those same people and techniques on their fellow citizens. (A small but important example would be the way that helicopter shows of force to disrupt crowds learned and mastered in Iraq and Afghanistan were then used in DC during the summer of 2020.)

I think that's what Robert was getting at, but without referring to the people who came up with this idea and its long intellectual history it felt ungrounded rather than a fully equal and valuable way of analyzing fascism.

Just TERF friends staging a photograph trying to get my people genocided.