I love a Chapo x TrueAnon crossover

Love Trueanon. Chapo is good too. BUT, I gotta remember never to scroll down to a Chapo comment box... It's just not worth it. Why do so many people who clearly just hate the pod and all the guests hang out in the comment box being edgy weirdos? Like, go outside dude. Go listen to something else. What are you freaks doing?! Nobody is making you be here!

Re: a government issued RPG, we should really bring back a WPA style national service, just to force young people to spend a year working on a farm or doing pottery or forestry or writing poetry or whatever. Physically interact with the world, make in person connections with people your age, we've seen how covid and spending your formative years alone in front of screen can break peoples brains.

I was so moved by Brace's story here! I was actually caught up in an eerily similar cult from ages 15 to 19, and the things it does to you are unreal. The group I was in was called the Palmer Drug Abuse Program, founded by a guy named Bob Meehan, and formed a larger model of substance abuse recovery called Enthusiastic Sobriety The things he described are things that me and everyone I knew at the time experienced: having your parents pay a big samoan dude to physically come and kidnap you, being sent to the work farms / "wilderness retreats" in MT/ID/UT, it was almost eerie hearing someone else describe it. And of course the toll it took on everyone. Of that whole social cohort I was in of like 20 or 30 people, every one of us but myself and 3 others are dead now, and I'm only 27. You had kids coming in for getting caught smoking weed who'd become so horrifically traumatized that they'd come out habitual heroin users by age 16 or 17. So anyways. I commend Brace for being able to share what happened to him, and bringing light to what goes on in those programs. And huge thanks to Chapo for having him and Liz on to talk about it! Healing, man. What a thing.

I had a RATM listening anarchist friend in high school who ended up getting pretty into drugs and kicked out of his parents’ place and eventually they ended up tricking him into going to one of those wilderness-camps-for-bad-kids like Brace described I hung out with him after he got out and they completely broke him dude it’s terrifying, not only does he have the social skills of a 5 year old now, he’s become a total alt-righter, is joining the army, and I later found out the 8 of the 15 other dudes in his group there killed themselves like as soon as they were released back into the world Wild stuff folks

I'm picturing Brace skill rolling past junkies toppling over and clipping through a bathroom door with the extra invincibility frames from his jacket.

My partners brother was swallowed up but these types of desert rehab scared straight shit. Just absolutely fucked him up for life. Tragic shit.

So many people are willing to just leave addicts to die. I like hearing about people who are able to use their own life as building blocks to help other addicts.

"Mother Jones" magazine did a piece in 2007 on a "Judge Rotenberg Education Center" where they were doing electric shocks on deeply autistic (and other mental issue) children in a modified boarding school setting and they had a sidepanel on all the various spinoffs of Synanon ("sin no more") including "Phoenix House", "The Seed" (founded by an ex-stand up comedian who had worked in a Playboy Club between the acts, internees had no privacy even in the bathroom, the organization got money from NIMH, the National Institute of Mental Health on a lark), "Elan School" (boxing every day), and "Daytop" (which played a version of Synanon's "game" outright). "The Seed" spawned "Straight, Inc." (Nancy Reagan love the program) which birthed "KIDS, Inc." and the "KIDS of El Paso" branch was amazingly abusive. Counselors came out of "Straight" and worked for "KIDS" with no real medical training or psychological education; they were just well-known graduates of the other program who were now college-aged. The Judge Rotenberg Center was finally closed down in 2011. If it were not for the 2007-8 economic meltdown, the "troubled teen" industry would still be running at full bore; there were counselors in it who had been involved with "teaching" teenagers for twenty or more years who had no degrees, just endless life experience. V. Miller Newton (aka "Father Cassian") was fined millions for running "KIDS of El Paso"; he just vanished into the priesthood, was allegedly abusive there too. Some of the "KIDS Inc." places became "Straight" locations; the one in Utah became "Life-Line" and is still working.

"slower, crappier, and kind of like, jenkier" -- man that's been the trajectory of life for the past 20 years.

2:11 what a strange, out-of-character enunciation and cadence. It’s like how Will speaks with a regular American accent unless he’s saying the word “rather”

I can't recommend their The Game series enough!

addicted to vidya

The Simpsons episode 'The Joy of Sect' said it all decades ago. Helped keep me sane as a teen during the Bush years, thank God ☄️🛸

So brace had to do Holes?

I love how dudes who used to smoke meth are always so fast

The braceism in this episode is off the charts. Just wow.

Liz is bringing too much jock masculine energy for the pod. Li-listen here Mac. Ok. We're gonna need you...need you to grind for lithium. Ok. In this place-high level area called Afghanistan. Got hip tip for you pony soldiers. Starting gear is best gear. Don't know why it's like that but it is. Spec into...into uh coding if you want a safe first play through. If you hit level cap you get 3 flasks adrenochrome for NG+. Ok. Game over........ah I'm sorry. Shouldn't a said that.

“Pokémon get in my belly” - Hillary Clinton

Pacino mistook the leg for the hoo ha!

I am unwritten Can't read my mind I'm undefined I'm just beginning The pen's in my hand Ending unplanned Staring at the blank page before you Open up the dirty window Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find Reaching for something in the distance So close you can almost taste it Release your inhibitions Feel the rain on your skin No one else can feel it for you Only you can let it in No one else, no one else Can speak the words on your lips Drench yourself in words unspoken Live your life with arms wide open Today is where your book begins The rest is still unwritten Oh, oh, oh I break tradition Sometimes my tries are outside the lines We've been conditioned to not make mistakes But I can't live that way Staring at the blank page before you Open up the dirty window Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find Reaching for something in the distance So close you can almost taste it Release your inhibitions Feel the rain on your skin No one else can feel it for you Only you can let it in No one else, no one else Can speak the words on your lips Drench yourself in words unspoken Live your life with arms wide open Today is where your book begins Feel the rain on your skin No one else can feel it for you Only you can let it in No one else, no one else Can speak the words on your lips Drench yourself in words unspoken Live your life with arms wide open Today is where your book begins The rest is still unwritten Staring at the blank page before you Open up the dirty window Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find Reaching for something in the distance So close you can almost taste it Release your inhibitions Feel the rain on your skin No one else can feel it for you Only you can let it in No one else, no one else Can speak the words on your lips Drench yourself in words unspoken Live your life with arms wide open Today is where your book begins Feel the rain on your skin No one else can feel it for you Only you can let it in No one else, no one else Can speak the words on your lips Drench yourself in words unspoken Live your life with arms wide open Today is where your book begins The rest is still unwritten The rest is still unwritten The rest is still unwritten Oh, yeah, yeah

the game series is what made me sub to true anon on patreon. the tti is so horrifying and pervasive that i'm thrilled to see so many different types of outlets covering different aspects of it recently. it's a man-made evil that w/in our power to end and every little bit of exposure helps.

I agree with Felix on football it is dishonest I’m Latin and I don’t pretend to like football I just know the sport through my parents

Read this comment section, look at the people feeling themselves in here, then get armed.

mr chapo, where is my quest for this month??

dunno about Rudyard Kipling, but one author who *definitely* had opinions about lady smells was James Joyce

Will watches sports? BS. I’m a cinephile whose spirit animal is capybara and I like sports there can only be one

[Comment removed because I too dead inside to deal with it comments ]

What song is playing at the very end of the podcast? Sounds like some video game soundtrack?

Bad teen school alumnus 2007 Harbor Oaks in Mars Hill NC

I don't like how ubiquitous the stick vape has become. When I started with It I was the only one, everyone else still had cigarettes and juice box vapes. Now every kid I see has a puffbar.

Is that outro music another Young Chomsky piece?

24:00 Maslow's Personality and Motivation?

Adderall. 49:06 - 52:15

Lotta short stories down here in the comment trenches…

haha nice

200th like. Better than being 1st. Just saying.

I think the leg is probably the closest thing to a pussy, for a blind man. Arguably the greatest Felix quote ever.

I had an ex who was a former addict who swore by the SMART program for recovery.

Trust me, antidepressants aren’t nearly as effective as you suppose here- 49:35. I’ve tried 5 and none of them did anything except ones which made me more depressed. This is a common story too.

Aderall is amfetamin with a brand name!!!

I think private prisons makes it very easy to put the blame on a few nefarious actors out for money. The truth is private prison abuses are symptoms, not causes of over incarceration. The true culprit, nearly too large to address, is American culture. Most average, ordinary Americans hate "criminals" and WANT to see them tortured and abused.

By the way, can anybody tell me the answer to the dragon's riddle on stage 4 of the Detroit quest line? This is killing me.

Hey you guys

Bring Myspace back!

48:53 - His dream is to be a pawn shop owner...?

"The Game" is pretty much exactly what Henry Murray did to 16/17 year old Ted Kaczynski while he was attending Harvard in the late 50s, just with more people. Thankfully most people who are subjected to this don't do anything even close to the shit Ted was doing, but it still like psychologically breaks so many young people it's insane that it's still happening.

Try using your platform to do anything...let alone organize

How many fcking renditions of the TrueAnon theme do we fcking need?? That was my takeaway from their series

1:06:13 - Yes. It's tough. To completely ignore Whitney Webb's book One Nation Under Blackmail. Totally. I know. Must be really hard on you.

Their miniseries The Game sounds like one of the NYT podcasts you all bashed and called "Booooorrrriiiiiinnnngggg." Lame

Yet another cost of crime. The total cost and effect of crime on America in the 20th century is truly mind-boggling - must be one of the most understudied and underrated issues in all of sociology, urban economics, and urban planning. Millions (mostly white people) fled once prosperous cities like Detroit because of crime, and the violence their (mostly white) children experienced in schools. The landscape of the American city changed because of crime. Political coalitions changed because of crime. The conservative revolution of the late 70s/early 80s happened in large part (after stagflation) due to crime. We wouldn't have suburbia to the extent we have it today without crime. In an alternate universe where we didn't have the unbelievably high crime rates among Blacks (which also affected Blacks to be sure) would we have denser and therefore cheaper housing? Alex T, Matt Yglesias, and Tyler Cowen constantly say that the high cost of housing especially in the most productive metros is the biggest problem in the economy. How many percentage points higher would the GDP growth have been in this alternate universe? I've watched a lot of Tyler Cowen's talks on KZfaq including very recent ones and in any talk, he gives he emphasizes how a mere 1 percentage point of GDP growth compounded over the course of a few decades results in a nation either having the living standards of the US or Mexico. It's a truly wonderful example of the importance of economic growth. So economists who emphasize economic growth should be more curious on this understudied topic. I see writers like Steve Sailer, Helen Andrews, Glenn Loury, and Christopher Caldwell talk about how crime changed America in the 20th century. Yet so little curiosity among economists about how many percentage points of GDP we'd have had and where our standard of living would be now if it weren't for the costs and effects of crime. I am taken aback every time I look at KZfaq footage of how cities like New York looked in the 70s and 80s. Truly astounding that American society let crime shape so much of America because of the fear of being called racist. But then not so surprising considering what Europe is doing to itself on immigration for the same fear of being called racist. I always bring this up anytime someone brings up 'walkable cities'. Crime. The difference is crime. If you increased American urban density substantially while extricating cars and vehicle-borne criminal activity, you get what you're seeing in downtown SF, LA, Chicago, St. Louis, and malls across America on steroids. Walkable European metros do not have American thuggery to contend with, and they would become ghost towns if they did.

"Research addressing genetic and environmental determinants to antisocial behaviour suggests substantial variability across studies. Likewise, evidence for etiologic gender differences is mixed, and estimates might be biased due to assortative mating. We used longitudinal Swedish total population registers to estimate the heritability of objectively measured violent offending (convictions) in classic twin (N = 36,877 pairs), adoptee-parent (N = 5,068 pairs), adoptee-sibling (N = 10,610 pairs), and sibling designs (N = 1,521,066 pairs). Type and degree of assortative mating were calculated from comparisons between spouses of siblings and half-siblings, and across consecutive spouses. Heritability estimates for the liability of violent offending agreed with previously reported heritability for self-reported antisocial behaviour. While the sibling model yielded estimates similar to the twin model (A ≈ 55%, C ≈ 13%), adoptee-models appeared to underestimate familial effects (A ≈ 20-30%, C ≈ 0%). Assortative mating was moderate to strong (r spouse = 0.4), appeared to result from both phenotypic assortment and social homogamy, but had only minor effect on variance components. Finally, we found significant gender differences in the etiology of violent crime." All of these statistics are summaries or representations of patterns in the real world. They are not concrete entities in and of themselves. So, for example, the authors admit that their power to detect patterns among females was low. Why? There were simply too few female violent criminals! Second, they speculate that their lower values for adopted-parent comparison had to do with a similar problem: this Swedish sample tended to have adopted parents who were extremely lacking in criminality, while their childs' biological parents tended toward violent crime. The biggest issue here is that direct parental suasion and modeling matters a lot less than the broader milieu which the parents raise their offspring in. In a broad stylize fashion Dan Quayle may have been right, but Hillary Clinton was right too: it takes a village.

Boring episode

Chapo Comment threads let's go!

"Chicago Public Schools (CPS) now spends over $29,000 per student, compared to $17,800 per student in 2020. According to the Illinois State Board of Education, CPS enrollment has decreased by 8.9% since 2020, with the Chicago Sun-Times projecting an additional 2.8% decrease in 2023" "CPS performance has declined as well, according to the 2021 Illinois Report Card. Only 26% of juniors could read or practice math at grade-level. According to a report by Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner from Wirepoints, only 11% of Black students and 17% of Hispanic students were reading on grade level in 2021. New York City public schools (NYC) is in a similar situation. NYC spent $30,772 per student in 2020, with enrollment declining 9.5% since 2020. According to the New York State Education Department, only 44% of students were proficient in reading in 2019. While the NYC Department of Education maintains that scores rose in 2021, only 21.6% of students were tested at all during the pandemic. Washington D.C. spent $30,115 per student in 2020, with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announcing an increase in spending by about $200 million in February, estimating an increase of $690 per student. While enrollment has declined in D.C. public schools by 2% since 2021, this is in sharp contrast to the trending increase during the aughts. For D.C. students, only 31% of students were at grade level in reading, and 22% in math. Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) voted in 2021 to increase their per student spending to over $24,000, a more than $8,000 increase over five years. LAUSD enrollment has declined 8% in the past two years. The district has lost 58% of its students since the 2000s. Only 41.7% of LAUSD students were reading at grade level, while only 28.5% were on grade level in math. The national average for public K-12 education spending per student in 2018-19 was $13,187. In 2020, the amount rose to $13,494. Chicago Public Schools, the New York City Department of Education, and the Los Angeles Unified School District more than double the national average in per student spending." Every child can grow up to obtain a PhD in physics from MIT, if only we spend 3,756,428 dollars per student.

Ironically, Scent Of A Woman was a remake of a 70s Italian movie… you guys are talking about a re-re make at this point. 🧉🦄