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Why is Bill Maher?

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen or met a Bill Maher fan. I’ve seen people agree with him about something, occasionally. Usually some other reactionary nitwit boomer like Elon Musk high-fiving him about how colleges and Pixar movies are turning all the kids trans. But he

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Is There Any Point to Exposing Anonymous Bigotry?

Another conservative hero donned his cape this week. At the University of Mississippi, which the media insists on referring to exclusively as “Ole Miss,” a black woman who was speaking as part of a planned protest event against the Gaza conflict was mobbed by frat boys who were way too

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Comedians Should Stop Complaining About Not Being Allowed to Do Comedy

I’ll be honest with you—when I started this thing, I thought this was going to be a funny newsletter. I’m not an expert on comedy but I did just spend the best part of a decade faking being funny and writing for a comedy website without getting

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For Free Speech to Survive, We Must Kill Twitter

Being an Australian, it’s probably notable that I hardly talk about Australia very much at all and go on instead about Elon Musk and cultural and political trends coming out of America. The fact is that Australian politics kind of bores me for the most part. I like that

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Four Challenges Tech Oligarchs Face When Solving the Underpopulation Crisis

As I’m sure you’re aware, there is an urgent crisis facing western civilisation that threatens its very future. I’m not talking about climate change, silly. I’m talking about severe, existentially catastrophic underpopulation. At least, that’s according to the tech oligarchs. And if you can’t

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The Real Origin of Woke

Is there any political word that sounds more embarrassing being said seriously by a grown adult than “woke?” A past tense verb crowbarred awkwardly into doing the job of either a noun or an adjective depending on who or what it’s complaining about at the time. It only really

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Agnostic Extremism: How Neutral Questions Become Political

The novelist, comedian, TikTok guy Jason Pargin has a bit that he’s been doing for as long as I can remember. Every couple of years he brings it up again, on TikTok or on Twitter or wherever he wants to stir shit, and I’m pretty sure he does

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How Concerned Should We Be About All These Nazis on Social Media?

Last weekend Ben Shapiro’s conservative media outlet Daily Wire, a support group of failed actors, comedians and writers who got together to pretend their failure is due to politics and wokeness rather than just being incredibly bad at making movies, cut ties with one of their key talents, to

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I Sure Am Sick Of All These Idle Rich People's Opinions About Work!

Here’s Ben Shapiro talking about why people should be made to work until the grim specter of old age curls its icy claws around their throats as their trembling enfeebled hand struggles to keep the welding torch straight. “Retirement is a stupid idea,” he spits, noting that everyone he’

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The Attention Itch

Very occasionally I get an itch somewhere, usually in my leg or my arm but sometimes worst of all it feels like it’s somewhere inside my head. And the infuriating thing about it is that I can’t quite pinpoint exactly what spot on my body is itching. Whatever

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Trumpism is America's Worst Export

Last week Liz Truss, the former British Prime Minister with a legacy even smaller than her lower jaw, spoke at the American Conservative Political Action Conference for some reason. Truss is Britain’s shortest serving Prime Minister but also arguably its most accomplished—having managed to kill both the economy

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The Inside World of Cats

I think a fair bit about the inside lives of my cats. The two girls, Andromeda and Athena, are twins, though not identical. They were in the beginning indistinguishable but for the colour of their eyes, but over time Athena got a lot fluffier. They were raised by us, together,