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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   38738 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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So... where's Joe Biden?

I will state for the record that these sort of questions come up fairly regularly. Almost always, the VIP emerges soon enough, seemingly no worse for wear. Kim Jong-un was MIA for a couple weeks, and I think Putin may have disappeared too at one point.

So normalcy bias being what it is, I expect Joe to turn up soon and give some sort of speech.

But, isn't it a bit strange that Biden made his announcement via Twitter of all places and hasn't been seen in public since? We have no idea whether he wrote that statement, or even signed it. The only evidence of him "stepping aside" is a JPEG on Twitter. Personally, I think there is a real chance that he is seriously ill. The stress of the two weeks cannot have been good for his health.

On a more meta level, this seems to pattern match a behavior we've seen from the Democrats a lot. Instead of proactively using openness to refute conspiracy theorists, they seem to double down on secrecy. Why let the rumors swirl? Why not have Joe pop out to say hello?

Whatever happens, I expects some great books and movies to come out about this two week period. To be a fly on the wall in the White House!

Update: 12:20am Tuesday. There are some crazy rumors swirling on Twitter with one source claiming that Biden is in hospice care and might die soon. It's a very low status source, but they correctly called the Sunday resignation. (Humorously they are squabbling with another low status source and have a ban bet going). Back in normiestan, Biden's physician claims that he is nearly recovered from Covid and is performing all Presidential duties (odd statement, that). More facts: Biden was supposed to meet with Netanyahu today but it's been moved to Thursday. Polymarket currently has Biden with a 50% chance of finishing his term - with no movement in the last 24 hours.

The selection of the new presidential canditate only through a tweet and with no appearance of Biden, certainly has the strong appearance of a coup. If Biden is conscious and can string two sentences together even with gaffes and dementia, he really ought to get behind a camera and speak what his account has twitted. He has that responsibility to his country even if he doesn't feel up to it.

There is also the possibility that he is alive but that tweet didn't represent his views at the time and there was a sort of a coup and he lacks control to counter it, especially after Kamala' endorsement by many.

Or maybe he was pressured and possibly threatened (scandals, prosecution of his son, or even him) but he did do it and he is bitter about it.

Another alternative that his reported health issue from last week is considerably worse than has been implied, in a 'man he looks like shit' sense.

If he physically looks weak / unable to function- say stuck to a bed with IVs- that would be an understandable reason to avoid any sort of visual media presence.

But yes, the conspicuous lack of presence- especially when tied to the immediate wave of pro-Harris election propaganda starting to go across the internet / into youtube advertisemenets that was almost certainly on hand and ready in advance- is 'he's not the one in control' vibes.

In fact reporting supports this. I saw a few articles that even identified a specific time frame where he made his decision Saturday night, identified who on his team knew about it, etc.

Two things allegedly contributed. One, yes, apparently he was taking longer to recover from COVID than expected, so half right there. Two, he got some polling data from the swing states, and oh boy was it bad.

In fact, and I found this interesting, they hadn’t done new major polling in swing states for almost two months! At least two sources I saw chalked this up to almost willful ignorance.

A coup is when you overthrow the leader of a country. Figuring out who runs for election to be the next leader is just not what a coup is.

  • -20

Palace coup:

a situation in which a leader is removed from power by the people who have worked with him or her

Biden is technically still in power.

Okay, again, Biden hasn’t been removed from power. There’s an upcoming election and his party decided to not nominate him.

  • -10

Biden hasn't been removed from power

With what knowledge the rest of us lack are you making this assertion

One presidential candidate got shot.

The other one went AWOL and is tweeting that he is no longer running.

If Biden dies close to the Trump assassination attempt we are going to have some wild "shadow war" conspiracy theories.

Shadow war? Maybe. Or the same group behind both. If Biden dies so close to the Trump assassination it raises the possibility that there were more plotters than the shooter related to Trump's assassination attempt. The same way Oswald being killed by Jack Ruby and then Robert Kennedy being killed by an assassin, raised the possibility of a conspiracy.

If Biden is dead it would look like a group might have decided to get rid of Trump in an opportunist and not highly competent manner and when that failed, thinking that Biden will certainly lose, they decided to get rid of him. Now, what about forcing Biden to resign? There is still opportunism there, and certainly culpability in regards to promoting a narrative that painted Trump as existential threat, and the possibility of such plots remain. But Biden's death would demonstrate a higher possibility of people brazen enough plotting to kill Presidents.

People would be correct to come with conspiracy theories that Biden might have met an unnatural fate if Biden is now dead while his twitter account announces the successor and just after the Trump assassination attempt. Events would be mega sketchy.

Do we really need to come up with a conspiracy theory to explain the death of a frail 81 year old? They have like a 7% chance of dying within a year.

We don't need to come up with it, it's a reasonable to do and unreasonable to not consider it a possibility, or worse to dismiss it. Biden dying in these circumstances would be genuinely incredibly suspicious by the nature of the events. It is possible a coincidence due to his frailty, and it is also reasonable to bring this up as a possibility but the timing matters and so it is a by default a reasonable thing to be suspicious about. Because he announced the successor on twitter without doing an appearance. Actually this kind of thing would be suspicious and speculated about when it comes to even roman emperors who in their death bed announced a guy there as successor and have been accused by people then and historians for murdering them.

Dismissing possibility of plots is certainly against the precautionary principle and allows criminal plotters to get away with them and it isn't a reasonable course. Of course history is full of plotters plotting nefariously. Not to mention that organizations like CIA have played important role in promoting propaganda dismissing conspiracies when that is what they do, plenty of criminal plots.

The way to go is to want more scrutiny, not to shut down these issues which is itself is suspicious. And there are some who dismiss such issues because they support those doing so. People who claimed the mafia didn't exist at minimum sympathized or had a relationship with the mafia, or were blackmailed like Hoover. We need people to show some courage and desire to put networks or in fact organizations like the CIA, Epstein's clique and clients and backers under the microscope and investigate and shut down such activities. Not just to dismiss the issues.

Also, Ceasar's wife should not be only honest but appear honest. I very much would rather political players to be sensitive in acting in a way that isn't raising real suspicions, which requires transparency. I am not interested in dismissing such things by default because that means giving them an opportunity to get away with criminal plots with zero scrutity. We need events to unfold in a manner where are not given reason to suspect foul play, by acting in a manner that doesn't make it plausible. We know for a fact that things dismissed as just paranoia like the goverment putting their thumps in the scale to censor in social media, or covid being the result of gain of function research, are true in first case and highly plausible in the later.

Obviously it's a possibility. Anything that's not physically impossible is a possibility.

Have you interacted with many 81 year olds?

Is it more likely that Biden got whacked, or that an extremely frail 81 year old, possibly with a neurodegenerative disease, with covid, occupying the most stressful office on the planet, during one of the most stressful (for him) times of his administration, finally kicked the bucket? Or is simply too incapacitated to make a public appearance?

I know my answer.

Or is simply too incapacitated to make a public appearance?

Of course, I am not saying that Biden has been murdered, or that he is dead and you are twisting things there. Assuming he is dead, yes it is plausible to a degree above just anything being a possibility that he has been murdered considering the circumstances and the timing. It is a plausible scenario.

Assuming by default that nothing nefarious going on, where it is suspicious that there is something and people both have motive, act in a manner where the death of the president is related to a tweet choosing successor that can't be refuted by an alive Biden is unreasonable and enables with criminal ploters to get away with such actions. Reasonable suspicion is a good thing and I find your preference of assuming coincidence to show bias towards influential networks and their honesty. Note that this is conditional on Biden being dead in response to a post claiming the implications of Biden dying close to Trump's assassination attempt and my default assumptions on this issue are different because I don't have a strong view of Biden being dead.

Well, if he's dead, he's exhibiting a remarkable state of preservation.

Good. Like I said in my first post on the issue, Biden really ought to appear even if he is diminished since in a succession, you need to see the guy endorsing their successor and a tweet doesn't cut it.

Well, that's a relief. This timeline was getting a bit too dank for me.

They have like a 7% chance of dying within a year.

This is so accurate I feel like you must have checked the same actuarial table I pulled up; next time add the hyperlink too so your statistics aren't mistaken for hyperbole!

The normie explanation is that he's old, weak and tired. He had to keep up appearances for the sake of his campaign, but now that this is over, he wants to check out and have some R&R. Maybe he'll coast like that for a week or two, maybe he'll coast all the way to the finish line.

Kate Middleton redux. They can’t pretend he’s alive for 6 months without any public appearances and they have little reason to. If he dies, they’ll announce it. Seems more likely he’s just angry at the party and sick anyway, and therefore doesn’t care to make any public appearances anymore.

He gave a speech to some union today and was cracking jokes. Did Kate Middleton do that the 3rd day after she was in hiding? I don't remember.

I believe she did, yes, to the same union.

This seems a reasonable take. It also suggests he wrote (or signed off on) that Tweeted comment under a certain amount of duress and probably coercion. Which hey, maybe from people with reasonable arguments. It still seems like horrible precedent. Yes I spelled that as intended.

There’s reporting with confirmation from police sources on the motorcade detail in Las Vegas that Biden suffered a medical emergency on Wednesday: https://x.com/jenvanlaar/status/1815588805300084983

The cops got a radio callout that there was an emergency with the President and scrambled to clear the way to the hospital, but Biden ended up on Air Force One instead. The event he had for later in the day was canceled. Another source says he suffered a transient ischemic attack.

One additional detail from a reporter on Air Force One is that they made the trip from Vegas to Delaware in 3 hours 40 minutes, and said that the plane was going so fast it was shaking.

Here’s a video of him trying to get into an SUV and needing a lot more help than normal:

https://x.com/anthonycabassa_/status/1813780713747149084

This was last weds when he disappeared for “covid”.

I love how the video narration says he's wearing a mask in the car, but the video clearly shows him in the car seat without a mask on.

Maybe he put on a mask later, I don't know.

The "dangerous alt right conspiracy theory misinformation to fully confirmed in the NYT" process is getting compressed down to a few hours at this point.

Now I'm confused, because I distinctly remember, around the time this comment was posted, being in my dad's truck, where he had MSNBC playing, and Nicole interrupted whatever Trump Vs Harris stuff they were talking about to show Biden giving a speech indorsing Harris and thanking his supporters. It stood out to me because he sounded like an old man on death's door, more so than anytime I've heard him speak prior. Of course he did start to ramble on in a stereotypical old man way before long, but it was more what the covid did to his voice.

Am I missing something, or did nobody else run this?

I think this is what you're talking about?

Weird. That speech didn’t happen. He hasn’t appeared on video in a couple days.

He phoned in to a Harris speech. That's probably what cae heard.

Oh god... are the Berenstien and Berenstein universes finally colliding?

I think the default explanation is just that he's still pretty sick and not in good condition to give a speech.

He's recovering from an illness, he's not campaigning, and he's by all accounts been dialed out of his day job for a while now. It doesn't seem like "why is Joe Biden keeping a low profile" requires a ton of explanation.

He's President of the United States. He just made the biggest announcement of his career. Notably this announcement was a 180 from everything he had ever said until yesterday.

Many people are suggesting that he was coerced, and that sounds pretty reasonable.

No, this is not the time to hide in his beach house.

He's an 81 year old with a serious(for him) illness who has six hours of lucidity on a good day.

If he was lucid enough to write that letter he’s lucid enough to jump on TV for a couple of minutes.

He didn't write the letter (likely). He probably has barely agreed to the not running part. If he is ever healthy(as much as this word applies to him) again, there is probably going to be a time where he starts (correctly) accusing people of tricking him into agreeing to drop out.

What would be the point of pretending Biden isn't dead?

If he died we'd get president and candidate Harris. Seems to be what everyone wants.

Hillary Clinton (it was HER place in history!)

More seriously, the media and Democrat insiders extremely strongly insisted Biden WILL drop out that weekend. And he did. If he also died that weekend that's maybe a bit too much of a coincidence to just gloss over.

She’d take the office as the first woman President of the US after having dropped out of the 2020 primaries due to bad polling and having been nominated by Biden due to her demographic profile (“Black” woman). She’d be seen as the face of DEI quota hiring, not a woman who succeeded due to her merits like Secretary Clinton would have been. The House will have to vote in her successor as Veep, and she’d be stuck with whoever they chose. None of the optics are good. And the polling says she has a good chance to occupy the office for all of half a year before Trump becomes 48th.

They also want her to earn the office of 47th President with votes, because they can campaign on “if you vote for her, you can show the world a woman can be President!” This boosts the down-ballot races.

The House will have to vote in her successor as Veep

It's a ceremonial office anyway.

They also want her to earn the office of 47th President with votes,

Of course, the 25th amendment doesn't cancel the election.

I don't totally discount the argumentum ab vibum, but I don't think it's strong enough to keep a conspiracy going.

I agree, I think there's a much likelier chance that Biden is very upset at what happened and is just not being very cooperative with the people who engineered his ouster

I think he's probably in a moderately-bad state (but not terminal) plus not cooperating. If he hadn't taken a downturn, I think he's not coerced to resign.

It's kind of a bad look if the sitting President of the United States blunders an interview, is widely considered un-reelectable, resists calls to step down and dies shortly afterwards.

That's the kind of thing you see in Crisis of the Third Century era Roman politics.

Except the alleged Pupienus was weeks before the debate.

It's not too far from what happened to FDR, except that guy managed the media better.

This might be the silliest 10 days I’ve ever seen.

  1. Weekend at Bernie’s debate
  2. Trump shot by 20 year old kid while SS watched and everyone just agrees SS incompetent
  3. Biden gets covid
  4. Cocksucking whore becomes nominee
  5. Biden just disappears
  6. No one at SS has any explanation for how a kid with no training wandered around with basically I’m a sniper going to shoot Trump shirt on and no one noticed

Did Covid just fry everyone’s brain? Or the kid playing the simulation got bored?

Forgot to mention at some point a crack smoking trust fund kid with a hooker problem may or may not have essentially been the acting President.

Edit: was meant to be humorous. By writing things in extreme. Humor of course does not always translate in text. My actual view on Kamala is 2010 Kamala and her true beliefs are fairly moderate.

I guess I advocated for perhaps the right is correct to pursue cancel culture as they have power. If you live by the sword you die by the sword.

Seems like I get enough upvotes. And I have previously criticized your AAQC taste.

Cocksucking whore becomes nominee

This whole post is an example of unfiltered culture warring where you just see how much shit you can throw at the wall. You've been told (and told and told and told) to stop posting like this. Last time you were told you were cruising for a permaban.

You have, by my count, 8 warnings and 6 tempbans, with notes saying "Escalate if he doesn't improve." You have zero AAQCs, and to my recollection, you have never posted anything interesting or of value. You collected nine reports on this post. I have no confidence you are willing or capable of improving.

I'm just going to make this a permaban, unless the other mods are feeling merciful and want to give you another chance.

Insanity. The simulation got weird.

I still remember when Obama roasted Trump at the 2011 Correspondent's Dinner. That was some funny stuff. Trump, what a clown, amirite?

If you told me that 13 years later I would be voting for that clown for President, I could never have guessed at the twists and turns of fate that brought us here.

For that to make sense your definition of "Shortly" is doing a lot of work here. Pretending he has COVID buys them what, a week? This is the sitting President of the United States, not some reclusive celebrity. He can't just mysteriously stop making public appearances or attending meetings for the next seven months.

IDK, these people aren't great schemers. I would've thought about this BEFORE doing some shady backroom deal to get an already old Biden as nominee in 2020 with Kamala. This was an eminently foreseeable problem.

I would've gotten a decent looking signature on my jpeg too. Maybe people are in a rush and playing for time to outrun the other factions to the throne? Maybe they're just collectively stupid?

It's also difficult to realize how deep the internet autists are going to look into something. Maybe 20 years ago you would have been able to get away with it but now its too difficult to control the narrative and I think some people have not updated.

Yes, if he were dead (he's not) there would be no need to hide it since that's everything they want. So why is Biden in hiding? Perhaps he had a 'sode (as the kids say) and is a babbling idiot. Perhaps he's extremely grouchy after having been shivved by his own party. I don't know. Seems like he'd want to give a nice speech for party unity.

I'm betting on sickness and senility. If Biden resigns now it reveals the big lie that he was just fine this whole time, when it's clear to everyone who has been paying attention that he has been incapable of doing the big job for months if not longer.

Hasn't he been isolated by his son and wife for a while? If they don't want him making public appearances(perhaps because they are not rational actors) then they might be able to stop him.

If Biden resigns now it reveals the big lie that he was just fine this whole time, when it's clear to everyone who has been paying attention that he has been incapable of doing the big job for months if not longer.

Not totally convinced.

If he were actually incapacitated I don't see why they wouldn't just invoke the 25th for the same reasons.

Kamala is looking to be president soon. She doesn’t want to normalize using the 25th amendment.

I don’t know personally how true this is but I heard recently in an interview that the 25th is not designed to forcefully remove a president. If the president is aware and capable enough to resist at all it wouldn’t work. I hadn’t heard that before and it changed my view of some of this stuff.

I don't believe anyone believes that the 25th poses a threat to Kamala.

In his interview with Stephanopoulos, Biden said, “Look. I mean, if the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get outta the race,’ I'd get outta the race.”

I think it’s pretty clear what happened.

Joe: "Lord, why do you sound like Nancy Pelosi?"

Lord: "I move in mysterious ways. Now, we can do this the easy way or the hard way..."

Don't mock. Kamala Harris could win in November and Nancy Pelosi would still be the most effective female politician in American history.

Looks like our troubles are behind us.

Is ..this a joke? I don't always know here.

It is, though the Biden quote is real.

On a more meta level, this seems to pattern match a behavior we've seen from the Democrats a lot. Instead of proactively using openness to refute conspiracy theorists, they seem to double down on secrecy. Why let the rumors swirl?

I'd guess that most White House staffers might not even be aware of this speculation, or if they are, they might consider it fringe enough to ignore. I've only seen this stuff on rightwing twitter.

It would be bad for Biden to give the most impactful speech of his career (dropping out and endorsing Kamala) if he is visibly sick. They want to move past sickly old Joe and focus on other things. Having one last “our president is about to die” video go viral is the last thing Democrats need.

He just called in via phone during Kamala's first speech in Wilmington. Ironically, sounds the best he has since the SOTU.

Kamala at one point says: “joe we’re so happy to have you on the recor….on the call. It is just so good to hear your voice”

Does this not strike anybody else as a pretty odd thing to say?

Imagine this was another country. Putin disappears due to some illness, and a few days later announces that he is withdrawing himself from politics, but he does this by posting a jpeg to Facebook, then nobody hears from him for a full day, and what we finally get is him calling into his replacements press event with what could easily have been some prerecorded audio.

I mean…what the hell? Why not have Jill call in at least?

Why not have Jill call in at least?

I can't imagine that would reassure anyone on the "dead Biden" train.

Maybe not the dead Biden thing, but the palace coup thing.

I thought the speculation on his whereabouts was over when I heard he phoned in. Then I saw this clip.

https://x.com/goddeketal/status/1815521002773766502?s=42

Someone please explain this. She blew it.

it also could have been a recording because they decided to record it rather than do it live. like how singers sometimes mime a recording at their concerts rather than sing live. not because he is incapacitated or locked up but because they can do a cleaner take and there is less chance of a technical issue that could interrupt the call. but i also think its funny that it could just be a lot of small lies that are feeding the conspiracy narrative. i'm sure there is some lesson about how you should be honest.

Or she was about to say, "on the recovery[...]", or "on the record[...]" and either changed her mind or blended two sentences together.

Regardless, I very much doubt he is dead, it makes no sense to hide that. If anything I think it's much more likely that he is being isolated because he doesn't really want to resign from the 2024 candidacy, and this is more or less a palace coup, either explicitly (he never said that he is resigning) or that they don't trust I'm to not say something ambiguous (or forget that he's resigned) during a live press conference.

This clip is the best evidence for "Biden dead" I've seen so far. Harris is even more sus than tricky Dick himself.

I thought she was going to be saying 'on the record' or something but no, that's not right at all. This is wild. And the whole way she's talking also makes it seem like a hoax.

What of the comments by 'Biden' just after where he says "It's mutual, I love ya kid" etc ?

The Kamala campaign certainly has a press person capable of hitting the stop and play buttons at the correct time. It's not like this was an impromptu speech.

As an American abroad for some time it's odd to see the US from the outside in the current era. There's no conspiracy speculation in Japan that I have heard of in the news regarding Biden's health, but it all seems bizarrely obviously a set-up in banana republic-type proportions.

Biden says he will only step down for health reasons. It is conveniently announced that he has COVID. He vanishes, tweeting out his disinclination to stand for re-election (though does not mention health anywhere in said tweet). In fact no one really mentions his health except to say he is on meds. Word trickles down that his staffers are surprised by his tweet.

His next presence is days later in a voice (not Zoom, not video) call, of course praising Harris as the inheritor of the mantle. A happy, positive old man gracious praise of Harris, who seems tickled pink and gushes how Joe and Jill are just like family (who gives a f**k?) It's bizarre. Am I just online too much or reading too many conspiracy types? Even taken at face value this all seems odd.

It's certainly plausible that there are recordings of him saying that in some other context. Though to what end, I don't know. Certainly they couldn't maintain such a rude all the way to November, and I don't see what a week or two would buy, other than maybe fake endorsements from a candidate who then tragically died.

Normalcy bias wins yet again. Nothing ever happens, yadda yadda.

Ironically, sounds the best he has since the SOTU.

I imagine he's had a weight lifted off his shoulders, much like the man who has decided to end it all. Hopefully, he can enjoy the final years of his life in peace. The last few months have been painful for everyone.

How sure are you that the voice you heard wasn’t AI synthesized?

If only AI Biden is based.

Am slightly disappointed it wasn't the "I'm smoking on Bhutanese Shadow Garden Dark Evil Pack" meme.

I assume you're joking, but I have to imagine we're not far away from Deep Fakes being used by state actors to manipulate the public. The technology is getting better and better.

I wonder how far we are from forging a voice being as difficult as forging a signature. Hopefully that's paired with widespread doubt about it as a method of authentication, but you still hear (occasional) stories about forged signatures being used for fraud in the age of photocopiers.

OpenAI were recommending phasing out voice auth back in March, passably mimicking voices is now extremely accessible. Current TTS can't replicate more subtle mannerisms and tics, but human mimicry and speech-to-speech gets you most of the way there.

Our whole system is built with toothpicks and rubber bands. The idea that a signature or a docusign means anything is farcical. Biden's signature didn't even look right on the Twitter JPEG. (Note: I'm not claiming its false – only that it shows just how bad a signature is as a form of ID verification).

It's funny how much of our fintech stack is built on obsolete technology. I've had trouble doing a Zelle bank transfer for $1200. On the other hand, my handwritten $400,000 check goes right through no problem with nary a notification.

Our best defense against cyberattacks is also the President's best defense against assassination: only stupid and crazy people ever try. So maybe that's some relief. Even when Deep Fakes are easy, reputable people might just not do it.

Consider this synthetic shitpost: https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1815137702561689866#m

You can tell from the x.com username that this is obviously going to be a fake, and the word choices and speech pacing make it even more clear. But for someone without such an idiosyncratic speech rhythm and reputation for stumbling and mumbling? We're well past "you can fool some people some of the time" and probably even "you can fool most people some of the time". I'd say we're at "you can fool most people most of the time" now, and it will only get worse.

When he disappeared, the claim was that it was COVID. Yet he wasn't wearing a mask, and he's Mr. Mask. So I would guess it was not COVID but rather something more serious.

(Alternatively, it is COVID but it's a serious case)

I thought COVID was a convenient excuse. It's got the advantage of being a medical diagnosis that can vary in severity, and also something you can get over. If he dropped because of Dementia or Alzheimer's, he can never get away from that. And in his remaining 6-10 years, he can't really give speeches at Harvard as a former president if he's known to be cracked mentally. But he can recover from COVID, and be treated as an ex president in good standing. Sure, he'll be visibly slower, but it doesn't really matter because he has no obligations.

Severe reaction to Paxlovid also a possibility.

This one makes at least some sense.

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On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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