The WTF? Thread

[elguapo4]

Him and Daly are like the worst sort of people you'd meet on the Irish left, squared. Though how left someone who is a tax defaulting fucking speculative builder is...

Not forgetting gifting his vineyard to his brother, and giving huge pay increases to himself and his son, just as his company went under.

[Lang Spoon]

The Iranians could be paying him or he's the kind of leftist who thinks any enemy of the west is his friend, even if it's oppressing women and its own leftists.

He's a professional arsehole, he doesn't need payment. These wankers with their half read Chomsky and their knee jerk support for anyone against "the West", a pox.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

no wallace has always loved money and needed money. Daly just hates her father and any authority figure to the point that she has no independent personality left .She doesn't actuially have any functioning brain any more, she's just a twitching mass of reaction, bitterness and hatred.

Its just the two parts of the "socialism" utopian grift. Narcissistic conmen and their thralls. I've reached the point whereby if someone calls themselves a socialist, i either want them to tell me their plan to democratically get people to give up on the idea of pruvate property, preferably without having to kill millions of people, or I want them to fuck off and stop wasting my fucking time and stop getting in the fuckibg way of people who might make things better

[Hot Pepsi]

no wallace has always loved money and needed money. Daly just hates her father and any authority figure to the point that she has no independent personality left .She doesn't actuially have any functioning brain any more, she's just a twitching mass of reaction, bitterness and hatred.

It’s just the two parts of the "socialism" utopian grift. Narcissistic conmen and their thralls. I've reached the point whereby if someone calls themselves a socialist, i either want them to tell me their plan to democratically get people to give up on the idea of pruvate property, preferably without having to kill millions of people, or I want them to fuck off and stop wasting my fucking time and stop getting in the fuckibg way of people who might make things better

That makes sense.

[Discordant Resonance]

Probably the most difficult task an individual could set themselves, as an amateur Drogheda historian attempts to rehabilitate Cromwell.

[San Bernardhinault]

So, I was channel skipping and turned on the World Ironman Triathlon Championships, expecting to mock it as one of the most tediously boring spectator sports conceivable, and heard the commentator say something like "Britain's Charles Barclay is leading the womens championship".

It's hard to get the very WTF image out of my head. It feels just so very wrong.

Anyway, it turns out that British triathlete Lucy Charles married her coach Reese Barclay. If there was ever a time to keep your maiden name, or go all the way in taking your partner's, or reverse the order of the hyphenation, surely this is it.

[Janik]

Teqball

It's part of a growing trend of inventing new sports simply by combining existing ones - in Teqball's case Table Tennis, Volleyball and Football, with just a dash of Tennis (second serves). If you are struggling to imagine what on earth this would look like, follow the link. The game I saw earlier today involved much faster and more powerful pay than that video actually, which implies the technical standards of it have already jumped significantly in the four years it has apparently existed.

I'm thinking of starting a thread on sport about this trend - other examples recently are Pickleball and Paddleball, but going further back there are things like Ultimate, Cycle Polo and of course Chessboxing. Planned title "Eye of newt..."

[WOM]

Pickleball is a stupidly enjoyable game, it should be noted.

[Hot Pepsi]

Pickle ball appears to just be smaller tennis, but not as small as table tennis.

[Cal Alamein]

I am very interested in someday checking it all out

[San Bernardhinault]

Pickleball is great fun. I have played once, but that was enough to convince me that it's fun.

[Sam]

Trying to remember where and how I've seen teqball before. Has it been mentioned on OTF before now?

Think I'd better issue a content warning for domestic violence for the following, and apologise for lowering the overall mood of the thread ...

Earlier this year, one of my girlfriend's cousins got married. He'd known his new wife when they were kids and they'd found each other again in the last couple of years. She has some problems with her health, both mental and physical, but they're very much in love. Things started getting a bit weird (from our point of view) after the reception, when she seems to have called her husband's / my girlfriend's aunt (that is, the sister of both my GF's dad and her husband's mum), who due to his mum being pretty much allergic to life outside her flat played a huge part in raising him, and told her not to contact either of them after the horrible things she said about her (the bride's) mum at the reception. We've all been highly confused about this for months, because a) no one in the family would do that and b) even if it did sound believable, we'd been with her the entire time and no such things had been said. My girlfriend met her cousin (but not his wife) for a coffee a few weeks ago. He had a slightly different version of what had happened but it seemed to boil down to his wife's cocktail of medications. He really wanted to reestablish contact with his aunt, but was under the impression she'd been the one to cut off communication and didn't want to hear from him. My girlfriend also learnt that he basically has no money (he works two full-time jobs) because he's having to spend so much on her medication (she can't work due to being ill all the time). GF went to the pharmacy with him because he needed to pick some things up for his wife, and he spent an amount roughly equal to a quarter of what we spend on rent each month, and told her it was about ten days' worth. My girlfriend's mum used to own a pharmacy, and my girlfriend and her brother would often help out there, and she'd never seen someone buy so much medication in one go. A month or two ago her cousin and his wife moved in with her parents to save on rent.

Fast forward to this weekend. Apparently she's been accusing him for a few weeks of being unfaithful, and it got bad enough that a couple of weeks ago he spent a week living at his parents' place to give her some space. He moved back to her parents' place about a week ago. At some point she'd gone online and maxed out all his credit cards. I shall pause here and say, before you read any further, that he is OK in spite of what you're about to read. Last night she waited for him to fall asleep then sat on his chest, pepper sprayed him and started beating him around the head as hard as she could. He thinks she might have drugged him, because when he woke up to her punches he found it hard to react for a while. He's a skinny little guy and she's more heavily built, but eventually he managed to get out of the room. It's a bit unclear exactly what happened thereafter but someone (possibly him, possibly her brother or her mum) called the police. At some point she smashed his computer to pieces and destroyed all his work papers (he's a secondary school teacher). Her brother took him to his parents' place and his mum told my GF's dad that while they were on the way over, at 6 in the morning, she got a call from her daughter in law, who told her 'I'm sending your son over to you,' and hung up without further comment. When the police turned up at her place, her family told them that she'd been the one who'd started it, which is some small relief. He ended up spending today in hospital (where the police were also called after he was admitted and the staff saw what he looked like), and according to his dad is currently in overnight for observation because they want to make sure his vision's OK on account of the pepper spray. He should be discharged in the morning as it otherwise looks worse than it is, from the sound of it. But still ... WTF?

[Patrick Thistle]

That's sounds awful, Sam. There was a similar situation in my extended family and it was very difficult to deal with.

[ursus arctos]

What an awful situation

One can be thankful that he is ok physically, but she clearly needs a great deal of help.

[Balderdasha]

That is horrendous. He might physically be ok relatively quickly but that is the type of incident that can scar someone psychologically for a long time. If it is appropriate, see if your girlfriend can suggest counselling for him once the immediate shock and adrenalin has passed.

Also, she may well need a lot of help, and some of her behaviour may be due to physical / mental health or whichever cocktail of drugs she's on, but that in no way makes it excusable. Your wife's cousin does not have to be responsible for her, or have to put up with being treated like that, no matter how much he loves her. If it was a friend or relative of mine, I would be encouraging them to leave the relationship immediately, unless the wife seeks immediate and serious help to prevent any possibility of recurrence. And even then, it would not necessarily be advisable to live with her for a while until she's dealt with whatever the underlying issues are. Domestic violence tends to escalate without serious intervention.

[Nefertiti2]

What’s the plan for maintaining the capitalist system without killing many thousands of people and destroying the planet The Awesome Berbaslug!!!

[Janik]

That is horrendous. He might physically be ok relatively quickly but that is the type of incident that can scar someone psychologically for a long time. If it is appropriate, see if your girlfriend can suggest counselling for him once the immediate shock and adrenalin has passed.

Also, she may well need a lot of help, and some of her behaviour may be due to physical / mental health or whichever cocktail of drugs she's on, but that in no way makes it excusable. Your wife's cousin does not have to be responsible for her, or have to put up with being treated like that, no matter how much he loves her. If it was a friend or relative of mine, I would be encouraging them to leave the relationship immediately, unless the wife seeks immediate and serious help to prevent any possibility of recurrence. And even then, it would not necessarily be advisable to live with her for a while until she's dealt with whatever the underlying issues are. Domestic violence tends to escalate without serious intervention.

That is an important point. Whatever drove her to do this she needs both treating for whatever the drivers are... and that could very well mean serious intervention from Argentine criminal justice system. Hopefully it is sufficiently in touch with reality to know that whilst domestic violence is vastly dominated by male-on-female, female-on-male also happens and is also extremely serious criminal activity.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

What’s the plan for maintaining the capitalist system without killing many thousands of people and destroying the planet The Awesome Berbaslug!!!

No, answer the question posed. Pointing out that other people are cunts doesn't make your ideas stronger, no matter how enthusiastically you do it.

How do you end private property without liquidating the kulaks, or being put up against the wall by the kulaks?

[Sam]

That is horrendous. He might physically be ok relatively quickly but that is the type of incident that can scar someone psychologically for a long time. If it is appropriate, see if your girlfriend can suggest counselling for him once the immediate shock and adrenalin has passed.

Also, she may well need a lot of help, and some of her behaviour may be due to physical / mental health or whichever cocktail of drugs she's on, but that in no way makes it excusable. Your wife's cousin does not have to be responsible for her, or have to put up with being treated like that, no matter how much he loves her. If it was a friend or relative of mine, I would be encouraging them to leave the relationship immediately, unless the wife seeks immediate and serious help to prevent any possibility of recurrence. And even then, it would not necessarily be advisable to live with her for a while until she's dealt with whatever the underlying issues are. Domestic violence tends to escalate without serious intervention.

I'm 99% sure he's already got a therapist. Lots of people here have them, and he's been dealing with anxiety and depression during the last few months (I wonder what might have exacerbated that ...). But yeah, she absolutely needs help. That was both my and my girlfriend's second reaction to the news, after we'd picked our jaws up off the floor. She's a danger to herself and to other people until she gets it.

He's home now (at his parents' place), and is physically fine but with a lot of bruises and bite marks(!). He also has enough swelling around his eyes that the hospital have told him they want him back in once it's gone down so they can run a scan, because his eyesight's not fully recovered. But mostly he's in shock. His wife's brother (who, it turns out, was the one who called the police) took all the stuff that was salvageable around to him this afternoon. Apparently that included his high-specced desktop computer – the one that she smashed up was his work-provided laptop. The cat he had before they got together has also been returned to him, although we're not sure whether he or she now has custody of the one they adopted together. I hope it's not in any danger.

The police took extensive photos of his injuries when they arrived in the small hours of Saturday night/Sunday morning, and also noted that she was essentially unhurt (perhaps she'll have a bruise or two from him pushing her off him, but that will be all, from what we've heard). Her family told them she'd started it, and she wanted to make a statement herself but backed down from doing so when they made clear that she'd be in an absolute world of trouble if she told them anything that later turned out to be untrue. Oh, and he's had a lawyer appointed already, having pressed charges. Both of his jobs have given him the week off, and the one he's had for longer (a school he's taught at for about ten years) phoned him to get more details and find out how he was and told him to take as long as he needs and not to worry about his job security with them. So it sounds like the worst-case scenario (of her trying to really go the whole hog and fuck his life up beyond repair) has already been averted. But I just can't imagine what he's going through.

[ad hoc]

No, answer the question posed. Pointing out that other people are cunts doesn't make your ideas stronger, no matter how enthusiastically you do it.

How do you end private property without liquidating the kulaks, or being put up against the wall by the kulaks?

His question is a good one though and it deserves an answer just as much as yours does.

[Satchmo Distel]

New York is empowering police to put people in mental hospitals without their consent:

https://gothamist.com/news/adams-nyc...l-to-hospitals

https://www.nyc.gov/assets/home/down...ce=govdelivery

[Hot Pepsi]

What could go wrong?

[ursus arctos]

I'm just glad my mother isn't alive to see this return to the bad old days

[ChrisJ]

US posters - is this overconfidence, or do people stateside train more in unarmed cross-species combat?

https://twitter.com/NoContextBrits/status/1597619183508160512?s=20&t=ZwiBjIW6SpjMsRniSYPYbw

[San Bernardhinault]

I think it means British geese are meaner than American geese, and British kangaroos are harder than American kangaroos.