(from P. Diddy Part I)

What are the team names, mascots, and odds for this "sports" league that should totally exist so that more people like Robert can make more people like Sophie roll their eyes at the claim that they "coulda gone pro!"?

(With deep love for all our recovering friends working to manage their addictions. You do the actual Super-Bowl-worthy work every day.)

Here is my google doc. I wrote quite a bit of it while stoned so that's why it is so disorganized. Also some names might be on there twice.

I made this list the night Kissenger died lol. I periodically update it when I come across someone who I believe deserves it. Quite a few friends of the pod on the list.

Can anyone recommend a series that goes into detail on what actually happened in Gamergate?

I was around (and gaming) when it was unfolding but I instantly tuned it out as it was so hateful. But recently my interest has picked up again following Robert and Jamie’s discussions around the topic.

But there’s not much detail, and I’d rather listen to a podcast than read an article or watch a video if possible.

I’ve found a couple of one-offs from American hysteria and internet hate machine, but I feel like there’s more going on than could possibly be covered in an hour?

So I recently revisited TPAB and the "interview" Kendrick had with TuPac caught my attention.

Here is what TuPac said:

The ground is gonna open up and swallow the evil.

That's how I see it, my word is bond.

I see and the ground is the symbol for the poor people.

The poor people is gonna open up this whole world and swallow up the rich people

'Cause the rich people gonna be so fat

And they gonna be so appetizing

You know what I'm saying, wealthy, appetizing

The poor gonna be so poor, and hungry

You know what I'm saying, it's gonna be like

You know what I'm saying, it's gonna be

There might, there might be some cannibalism out this motherfucker

They might eat the rich, you know what I'm saying?

Also just because this is an amazing song. Here is the poem at the end:

The caterpillar is a prisoner to the streets that conceived it

Its only job is to eat or consume everything around it

In order to protect itself from this mad city

While consuming its environment

The caterpillar begins to notice ways to survive

One thing it noticed is how much the world shuns him

But praises the butterfly

The butterfly represents the talent, the thoughtfulness and the beauty within the caterpillar

But having a harsh outlook on life, the caterpillar sees the butterfly as weak

And figures out a way to pimp it to his own benefits

Already surrounded by this mad city

The caterpillar goes to work on the cocoon

Which institutionalizes him

He can no longer see past his own thoughts, he's trapped

When trapped inside these walls certain ideas take root, such as Going home, and bringing back new concepts to this mad city The result?

Wings begin to emerge, breaking the cycle of feeling stagnant

Finally free, the butterfly sheds light on situations That the caterpillar never considered

Ending the internal struggle

Although the butterfly and caterpillar are completely different They are one and the same

Criticism of Sophie will not be tolerated and may result in a permanent ban. Yes, forever.

Obviously you can criticize Robert. It's what brings us together.

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/

Criticism of guests is against policy and will be removed at Robert's request. Also because they are guests and we should make them feel welcome, because we are at least 40% not assholes.

CZM hosts will be treated the same as Robert in terms of criticism, but critical comments will be removed if they break the don't be mean rule. Except Robert. Criticism of Robert can be mean if it is funny.

Host criticism outside of this discussion post will likely be removed. You all nuked that eel horse.

Guests and hosts are normal people who read these comments. Please consider how it would feel if the comment was about you.

Be nice to each other. You can argue all you want but you can't fight.

Fascists and Tankies and their defenders will be permanently banned, because obviously.

Hellfire R9X knife missiles are made by Lockheed, not Raytheon (really, look it up).

What if we as a society just up and kidnapped a bunch of bastards and put them together on an island in the middle of nowhere and just left them there.

Here’s a starting list, feel free to add your own:

• Andrew Wakefield

• Marjorie Taylor Greene

• Nancy Mace

• RFK

• David Duke

Holyyyyyy shit, mods are working overtime to squash any conversation at all about a thing. I want to see how long a thread lasts without any mention of what that thing is. The last thread that disappeared was in reference to whether or not the thing was a distraction.

Hitler fan Stew Peters arrested for DUI. Drinking too much beer at the beer hall putsch?

https://www.joemygod.com/2024/12/report-pro-hitler-host-stew-peters-arrested-for-dui/

This is literally so stupid but not a shitpost, I promise. Yes, it’s shitty and class traitory but I have a disability that leaves me homebound for periods so one of my only options is to work in corporate, I’m not educated or talented to do much else. Because of this, I have to do a bunch of bullshit on LinkedIn all the time. Today I noticed that my manager unironically has a JACK WELCH quote in his bio which made me laugh so hard because he’s a dude that legit was cheering on the potential Kroger/Albertsons evil merger, makes perfect sense. Still tone deaf asf to publicly do that when we make like 1/6 of his salary and most of us have additional jobs and side hustles just to scrape by with the current price gouging from those ghouls.

Anyway, I wanna put a quote on my profile now from someone diametrically opposed to him in my bio now, it’s subtle enough to piss him off but I can’t get actually in trouble for it. I’ve shared and liked some Better Offline stuff and no one batted an eye. Anyone got ideas? After work I couldn’t give less of a shit about the business community so I can’t think of anyone. Any other fellow anarchists trapped in tech or corporate got ideas?

You’re welcome.

Listening through the pod for the first time and the fact that this episode was spontaneous and not researched shows haha. But also I know I can't expect everyone to have encyclopedic knowledge of the cult I grew up in even if its the driving force behind everything wrong with America. So here's a couple of context notes from someone who grew up fundamentalist christian, because while I love making fun of conservative christian conspiracists as much as the next guy, there's plenty of actual bullshit to make fun of without just capitalizing on misunderstandings of completely innocuous stuff.

1. The idea of "scales falling from your eyes" has nothing to do with lizard people (or at least not usually. If this author tries to tie that comparison in later, he's Extra Nutty).

According to the book of Acts, at one point before he was a Christian (back when he was an anti-Christian terrorist who thought Christians were blaspheming God) Paul was struck blind by God on the road while heading to Damascus to kill some Christians. God also manifests and tells him off for murdering Christians in His name. Paul has to go repent and get baptized by the people he's been killing, and when he does his sight is restored.

This restoration of sight is described as "the scales falling from his eyes" by the author of Acts. It's his literal "come to Jesus moment". He gets a shiny new name (he used to be called Saul) and becomes the most prolific writer and missionary in the New Testament.

When Christians talk about "scales falling from eyes" they're referencing Paul's sight being restored, and they mean someone seeing the truth of something, or being converted. Also, fun tidbit, many people think that the "scales" wording was chosen because Paul was given some form of cataracts or glaucoma that visibly made his eyes reflective and silvery, like fish scales. (Remember that a bunch of the apostles were fishermen first and fish imagery plays heavily in the New Testament as a result)

2. Arminian is NOT a mis-spelling of Armenian! Arminianism is a theological standpoint, it's the opposite of Calvinism. Basically the biggest debate of protestant theology in the last few hundred years or more has been the question of free will vs predestination.

The 17th century Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius and his followers (Arminians) believe that man chooses whether to be saved or not, while God knows everything it's still our decision. This theological stance was a reaction to Calvinism.

John Calvin and his followers (Calvinists) believe that since God knows everything all of history is predestined, including who becomes a Christian and goes to heaven or not, so if someone "chooses" to be saved that's just because they were always destined to do so.

If I remember right most conservative christians lean Calvinist, but there's a huge amount of disagreement even within churches. Calvinism is depressing even though it follows logically from the other doctrines at play, so I always leaned Arminian.

Thanks for reading!

Fantastic episode. Mia Wong knocked it out of the park once again. Always appreciate the information about the economy because I only barely passed Economic 101 with a C-.

As the episode nears the end, Mia begins to talk about the idea of price and the only thing standing between us and free items is a man with a gun and that in Portland (also can be seen here in Washington) a lot of stores are now using armed guards at the entrance and exit points to protect their prices. Now what I am curious about is how much of price is now being determined by stolen items? I have heard many cashiers tell me they have witnessed time and time again people attempting to take things right in front of them and even succeeding at some points. I know that there are news stories out there about the failures of the automatic check stand and how people have figured out how to screw these over. Does anyone know if this is happening enough to really effect a stores bottom line or is this idea of the amount of items being stolen hyperbolized to help "justify" price increases?

Whether it's immigration, crime stats, policies etc, it doesn't matter.

The constant flood of lies and misinformation from right leaning news and talking heads requires too much effort to debunk and deprogram, and it's gotten to the point where I feel like these people are so into the fantasy that it makes no difference.

My FiL is a hardcore Fox-Reagan-Trump lover, and never misses an opportunity to sneak in a "isn't my party great" jab anytime we see him. Recently he congratulates me on my new job, and went on with "..and now you'll really be doing great, once Trump bans taxes!" My replacement theory believing neighbor told me the same thing last week.

Yeah Trumps 1% tax breaks and foreign tariffs are going to turn me into a fucking millionaire. I swear to Zeus none of these people have ever practiced critical thinking in their entire lives.

Granted I also live in Florida, but I am surrounded by this shit everyday, all day. Coworkers, neighbors, strangers etc. I used to be able to keep a few trains of thought always idling for on the spot debunking, but it's gotten to the point where explaining how Trump is about to dump America into the worst depression it's ever seen is too much effort.

Fuck it. Let the leopards feast.

Has Robert ever done an episode on the Dutch East and West India companies or the Kingdom of the Netherlands?

I was talking to my gf about the Netherlands and I remembered that they were some of the arch colonisers and then realized I know very little about the Dutch colonial history

update the legal challenge to this ruling is set for Jan 13 2025 so well after Xmas. we lose no matter what the union appears to jist go along with this....

I'm really grateful for the humanity I've been shown by most people so far going to get high and paint 40k minis

I'm a LC for the can post

I just found out the federal government is ending the strike they really gave the middle finger to everyone who was out in the cold literally. The execs who work for the government are safe but none of our demands have to be met now.

Mad and contacted my elected officials and union rep. any ideas?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c4gl804j8gjt

Dodgy as hell, Epstein’s best pal, and a constant embarrassment to his mother (and now older brother)

I hate the platform with a passion and refuse to use it but so many people around me consume the majority of their information about the world that way. I can’t help but think that Robert and Sophie could put together captivating shorts to teach people on that platform about the bastardry going on around us constantly. Like I said, I realllllly fucking hate it and think it’s doing terrible things to humanity as a whole, but it’s also not going anywhere and grifters be griftin’ their asses off. If you can’t beat em’…fuck em’?

During the Kissinger series, there was a part where a Robert revealed that there was a proposed amendment to the US constitution to allow those who were born overseas to run for President, which was obviously for Kissinger's sake. I have a feeling that that if Elon Musk can stay in Trump's (and therefore, the GOP's) good graces, that amendment is going to get proposed again. Some Matt Gaetz-esque bootlicker will try and propose that Musk should be allowed to run. This is an absolute long shot of a prediction, but I think it could genuinely happen. Maybe a 12% chance. Chances of it passing, obviously 0% because of how amendments need to be ratified, but if you think of the way the current GOP congress will scrape and claw for approval, Musk's desire for love and the weirdness of the system, I think that it's not beyond comprehensible that someone will put this amendment on the table again. Anyway, I'm sure everything will be fine.

Been talking to a few coworkers about the show n we all were surprised when it came up there was never an episode on Nestle. They seem right up Roberts alley, and with the 'water isn't a human right' and the baby formula shit they did in Africa, I feel like we've only seen the outwards evil of something probably way deeper and weirder. Id love to see this dug into. Also saw they were founded in 1866? Yeah I wanna know what this company been up too for the last 120 years or whatever lol

Listening to the latest episode, the guy from England was pushing back against people "on the left" who supported Assad and all his crimes.

Are there actually people on the left in America that support Assad?

How much do you think we’d need to raise to crowdfund a TNG rewatch podcast?