Untied State of Anxiety

The three Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—are not separate belief systems but one spectacularly fractured intellectual property built on the same God, the same foundational mythology, and the same unanswerable question: who speaks for the divine, and did that contract ever officially close? Judaism locked in the original covenant and refuses sequels. Christianity retconned the whole thing with a Messiah twist and then splintered into 45,000 denominations the moment personal interpretation entered the chat. Islam showed up last, declared the previous two seasons a mess, and dropped what it calls the definitive final edition. Four thousand years later, they're still at war over a shared origin story none of them can prove, and the body count suggests humanity would sooner end itself than admit they might all be watching a bootleg. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

In March 2026, as the “Second Civil War” chatter ramps up and the world feels like it’s teetering on the edge of total bullshit, Star Trek canon smugly reminds us that **World War III** officially kicks off this very year—running through 2053 with a body count of around 600 million, courtesy of nuclear fuckery, eco-terrorist Colonel Phillip Green, and his “purity” genocide bullshit—thanks in part to timeline meddling by Romulan time-traveling pricks who shoved the Eugenics Wars out of the ‘90s and into the future to keep things spicy. The upside? After we nearly wipe ourselves out in the Post-Atomic Horror, Vulcans finally land in Montana for First Contact, drop warp tech, and force humanity into a much-needed ego-obliterating reality check where borders, money-grubbing, and follower-count obsessions look like toddler sandbox fights; scarcity gets curb-stomped by replicator-like abundance, survival stops being a capitalist subscription scam, and we pivot to actually building a world worth a damn—though honestly, with the proto-warp tech we already have for universal basics like housing and healthcare, we could skip the radioactive apocalypse and just grow the fuck up now instead of waiting for space nerds to lecture our charred asses. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

Elon Musk just snagged the crown as the richest person ever on Forbes’ 2026 World’s Billionaires List with a jaw-dropping $839 billion net worth—up a massive $497 billion in a single year thanks to Tesla’s rocket ride, SpaceX’s valuation surge after merging with xAI into a $1.25 trillion beast, and even the restoration of some hefty Tesla options. But here’s the snarky reality check: this eye-watering figure is almost pure paper wealth, tied up in his big stakes like a ~43% chunk of the SpaceX-xAI combo (worth around $542 billion), a 12% Tesla slice (~$166 billion), and smaller bits in X, Neuralink, and the rest—meanwhile Bloomberg’s playing it safer at about $676 billion with more conservative private-company math. Musk himself calls it “cash poor,” skips a real salary, borrows against stock instead of selling, and his actual liquid cash is probably just low single-digit billions at best—think high-score leaderboard flex rather than Scrooge McDuck swimming in vaults, since dumping it all would tank the prices overnight and turn that fortune into a wild rollercoaster swing of tens of billions on any given day. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

While you’re online screaming at strangers about culture war nonsense, the top 1% is quietly hoarding 31.7% of all U.S. wealth while 165 million Americans split a pathetic 2.5% of what’s left — and the people who are supposed to fix it are too busy trading stocks on insider information to bother. During the April 2025 tariff chaos, dozens of Congress members on both sides made thousands of suspiciously well-timed trades, and the penalty for getting caught is a $200 fine — less than a parking ticket. You’re not polarized. You’re just a very effective distraction from your own robbery.. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

In this episode, we’re peeling back the layers on America’s favorite recurring monthly bill: the military aid package to Israel that’s basically on geopolitical autopay. We dive into the “Buy American” shell game that turns foreign aid into a massive subsidy for U.S. defense contractors, the high-stakes influence of AIPAC’s nine-figure lobbying machine, and the “End Times” obsession of American Evangelicals who view Israeli real estate as a prophetic stopwatch. From Texas-bred red heifers intended for ancient sacrifices to the “Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier” strategy of the Cold War, we explore why this alliance is less about “shared values” and more about a circular economy of lead, steel, and divine insurance policies. If you’ve ever wondered why your tax dollars are buying fighter jets for a country halfway across the world while your local potholes are gaining sentience, this is the deep dive you’ve been waiting for. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

The digital economy of 2026 has officially devolved into a multi-billion-dollar dumpster fire where social media platforms act as the getaway drivers for AI-powered fraudsters. According to the latest data, consumer fraud losses have exploded to a staggering $12.5 billion, with platforms shamelessly cashing ad checks from scammers who use generative AI to hunt vulnerable populations—most notably seniors, whose reported losses quadrupled to $2.4 billion in just four years. While tech giants offer pathetic shrugs about "moderation challenges," the reality is a systemic collapse of trust where institutional greed ensures that your Grandma’s retirement fund is just another "revenue incentive" for a bot farm’s bottom line. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

If you're feeling a bit jumpy this Friday, March 13, 2026, don't worry—it’s just a textbook case of paraskevidekatriaphobia fueled by centuries of bad dinner parties (looking at you, Judas and Loki) and a math obsession that treats the number 13 like a social pariah. We are currently trapped in a rare "Triple Friday the 13th" year, a statistical annoyance that happens only once a decade, meaning you’ve already survived February’s hurdle but still have a date with destiny this coming November. While the rest of the world rotates through their own localized flavors of doom—like Italy’s fear of Friday the 17th or the Greek distrust of Tuesdays—the data suggests you’re actually safer today simply because everyone is too paranoid to drive like a maniac. So, maybe just stay away from any hockey masks and wait for the "double-eight" luck of August 8th to bail you out. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

Episode 404: No Car Payments (And Other Perks of the Grid Going Down)In this episode, we dive into a darkly humorous and genuinely terrifying thought experiment: what happens if a geopolitical adversary decides to bypass the U.S. military and simply unplugs the American economy instead? We explore the uncomfortable reality that our modern world is essentially a giant, fragile vending machine completely dependent on electricity, Wi-Fi, and electronic payments. If the grid goes down, the digital economy faceplants, the trucks stop rolling, and we are quickly left staring at empty grocery store shelves. Join us as we track the grim timeline from "just-in-time" supply chain failures to the infamous "nine-meal rule" of societal collapse, and find out why the only real silver lining to the apocalypse might just be a freeze on your auto loan.In this episode, we cover:The Vending Machine Economy: Why our complete reliance on digital infrastructure is our biggest Achilles' heel.Just-in-Time Logistics: The illusion of endless warehouse stock and why grocery stores only actually hold a three-to-seven-day supply of food.The Nine-Meal Rule: How missing just three days of meals triggers the pivot from polite civilization to full-on "improv mode."Frozen Debt & New Currencies: Why your maxed-out credit cards won't matter when the guy with a generator and a chest freezer becomes the local warlord.The Geopolitical Reality Check: Why this threat isn't just a dystopian fantasy, but a strategic vulnerability that adversarial nations are actively watching. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

Patronage—the ancient art of rewarding loyalty over competence—has been America’s real hiring system since Andrew Jackson turned the federal government into a thank-you note dispenser for campaign volunteers, spawning nepotism (hire your relatives), cronyism (hire your golf buddies), and networking (hire your golf buddies but act sophisticated about it). The whole apparatus got so deranged it eventually produced a rejected job applicant who assassinated a president, which nudged Congress toward the radical notion that qualifications might matter, though not enough to actually kill the underlying system—just dress it in better clothes. The honest truth patronage has always known is that relationships are the real currency of employment, skills are merely the cover charge, and somewhere right now a guy who made three phone calls for the right campaign is getting onboarded for a job he cannot spell while your perfectly formatted résumé rots in an HR portal.. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

Despite looking like something built by a supervillain and sounding like an angry violin, high-voltage power lines are not secretly murdering the population—the electromagnetic fields they produce are low-frequency, can’t damage DNA, drop off to basically nothing within 100 feet, and get absolutely smoked by the hair dryer you point at your own head every morning. Yes, one study found a slight leukemia correlation in kids living very close to them, which got ELF magnetic fields classified as “possibly carcinogenic”—a category that also includes coffee and pickled vegetables—but after decades of research, scientists still can’t find any biological mechanism that would explain how these weak-ass fields actually cause harm, and the overwhelming consensus from the WHO on down is that there’s no convincing evidence they do. The real danger isn’t the towers; it’s the comment section.. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

While technology allows us to automate almost every other aspect of modern life, the American car-buying experience remains trapped in a legally mandated 20th-century loop. This systemic frustration is fueled by powerful dealer associations and protectionist state laws—particularly in states like Alabama—that force consumers into “ritual combat” with salespeople rather than allowing direct-to-consumer online sales. Even as new EV players like Tesla and Scout Motors attempt to bypass this “toxic marriage” through legal loopholes, legacy manufacturers remain shackled to traditional franchises, ensuring that “independent” dealers—and their $10,000 market adjustments—remain the gatekeepers of the American driveway. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

The American healthcare landscape has shifted from a place of healing to a source of profound financial trauma, where the fear of unpredictable medical debt—driven by “trapdoor” billing and hidden costs—now dictates public behavior more than medical necessity. This systemic breakdown forces individuals to perform a dangerous cost-benefit analysis on their own symptoms, leading to delayed care, worsened health outcomes, and a cycle of “learned avoidance” that ultimately shortens lifespans. For many, avoiding the doctor isn’t an act of irresponsibility but a logical defense against potential bankruptcy, highlighting a fundamental failure in a system where seeking help is perceived as a greater risk than the illness itself. This crisis is further exacerbated by a political divide where the prioritization of military and border spending over a robust social safety net leaves the most vulnerable to choose between their physical survival and their financial stability. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

If your life goal is to extract maximum currency from the capitalist machine while maintaining the resting heart rate of a sedated sloth, then Strategic Apathy is your new North Star. This hierarchy of low-effort, high-ROI “careers” ranges from the front-loaded misery of Online Course Creators and the professional “problem-forwarding” of Property Managers to the blazer-wearing, acting-heavy hustle of Real Estate Agents and the “professional Googling” performed by Travel Agents. However, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the list is the Night Security Guard, a role that essentially pays you to be sentient furniture while you finish your degree or a video game. Ultimately, the trick is to find the right leverage—whether it’s a licensing test or a quiet warehouse—to ensure you’re getting paid to exist without ever accidentally falling into a “hustle cult” or working harder than humanly necessary. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

In the early-2000s Great American Carb Inquisition, smug bow-tie charlatan Dr. Robert Atkins convinced a nation of bacon-worshipping denialists that calories were a myth, willpower was for losers, and the real enemy wasn’t overeating entire deep-dish pizzas but innocent carbs—especially the treacherous bagel and the satanic cinnamon roll—that supposedly spiked insulin and handcuffed fat to your ass forever. America went full cult mode: low-carb aisles popped up like panic bunkers, restaurants castrated burgers, office bagels vanished into witness protection, and Cinnabon became dietary war crime central, all while early water-weight whooshes tricked morons into thinking they’d hacked biology. Physics eventually bitch-slapped the fantasy—calories still ruled, saturated fat wasn’t suddenly heart medicine, Atkins himself died looking suspiciously un-shredded—and corporate America swooped in with low-carb Twinkies to keep the processed grift alive. Decades later, after keto reboots and gluten exorcisms, waistlines kept climbing because the true villains (giant portions, endless ultra-processed snacking, sedentary screen lives) never got torched. The bagel was framed, you paranoid dipshits; breakfast deserves parole. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

Crypto is the scam of the millennium: a worthless, energy-guzzling vaporware Ponzi dressed up as revolution, where finance bros snort lines and laugh while retail suckers YOLO life savings into exit liquidity for whales who rug-pull at peak hype, leaving bagholders with diamond hands that just mean they’re the last idiot standing in a burning digital dumpster fire—consuming more power than entire countries to enable dark-web drugs, ransomware, and endless “hyper-deflationary AI vibe oracle” memecoin grifts that evaporate overnight, costing billions in 2025 alone, all while the planet melts so Chad can flex his Lambo dreams on Twitter before ghosting to a tax haven, proving that if the future of money requires a PhD to avoid getting phished by a Discord kitten, maybe the old fiat system with actual rules wasn’t so bad after all. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

In the fever-dream clown rodeo of fake geography, Leeds, Alabama’s finest Bubbas thump their chests as 200-proof Caucasian kings, rebel flags waving like they’re auditioning for the apocalypse, while geography yeets their entire identity into a woodchipper: Europe is just Asia’s bougie back porch, the Ural Mountains a sad little “no Asians allowed” picket fence Europeans nailed up during a cultural tantrum. Scrub that imaginary line and—bam!—every mullet-sporting, deer-antler-truck-humping, Natty-Light-forehead-crushing redneck is **full-on Asian**, eternally tagged “Caucasian” thanks to horny skull-stalker Johann Blumenbach jizzing over one hot Caucasus cranium (in Asia, duh) and crowning white people “sexiest import from the sexy Asian mountains.” Picture Cletus screaming “Them Asians stealin’ our jobs!” while the map itself cackles, “Honey, YOU’RE the Asian—now twerk the lezginka in your camo crocs and pass the kimchi-dipped ribs, family.” Actual Caucasus folks glide in silk like mountain supermodels; our “Caucasians” flex by shotgunning beers in trucks that look like taxidermy exploded. Vibes supremacy annihilated. Continental drag show canceled. Welcome home, y’all—your Asian passport’s in the mail. 💀 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

In the year of our lord 2026, Canada—bless its polite, poutine-slathered heart—still clings to the constitutional cosplay of being ruled by a hereditary British monarch who wouldn’t know a Tim Hortons from a tea cozy if it bit him on the royal ass. Every law gets passed “in the name of the King,” trials are “The Crown vs. Whoever Fucked Up,” soldiers swear loyalty to a guy 3,000 miles away who inherited the job via superior sperm, and yet the entire nation insists it’s “just ceremonial” while requiring a constitutional root canal to ever scrape the monarchy off the letterhead. It’s peak Canadian brilliance: achieve full independence without the messy drama of a revolution, then keep the decorative ghost of divine-right bullshit wired into the system because actually untangling centuries of red-tape inertia sounds like too much goddamn effort. So here we are, a G7 powerhouse running quantum-level tech and AI startups while structurally bowing to a family tree that peaked in the Middle Ages—because nothing says “modern democracy” like politely refusing to fire the world’s most overqualified figurehead.. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

The core argument is that racially branded media—once a vital "emergency infrastructure" for groups ignored by the 1980s mainstream—has morphed into a permanent, corporate-sanctioned system of demographic segregation that actually hinders true equality. While specific cultural storytelling like Atlanta or Reservation Dogs is essential art, the organizational "silos" represented by networks like BET or "multicultural verticals" have become little more than cynical market segmentation tools for conglomerates to price "eyeballs" by skin tone. If we truly view equality as a standard rather than a metaphor, we must stop treating these digital FEMA trailers as permanent housing and move toward a competitive landscape where quality, not a racial label on the door, determines the audience. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

In 2026, tech’s grand “everything machine” experiment has finally imploded under its own weight of relentless notifications, algorithmic mind games, and autoplay ambushes, so now the hottest trend is subtractive design—aka devices that finally learn to shut the hell up. The iPod Classic is being resurrected like a zombie saint not for retro chic, but because people are willing to perform hardware surgery on decade-old relics just to reclaim the revolutionary luxury of a gadget that plays music and does literally nothing else—no personality quizzes, no “you might also hate this” suggestions, no phantom buzzes from muted group chats. Light Phones, reMarkable tablets, Kindles that don’t nag, vinyl spikes, film cameras, and dumb phones selling out faster than therapy appointments all scream the same truth: the new premium isn’t more features, it’s fewer interruptions. After a decade of convenience porn that delivered infinite everything and made nothing feel special, Gen Z’s most punk move is choosing friction on purpose—single-purpose tools that refuse to hijack your brain. Silicon Valley can keep pretending this isn’t happening, but the market is quietly voting with its wallet: the smartest, sexiest thing a device can do right now is leave you the fuck alone. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

Americans love mocking Asian accents like it’s a personality trait, while completely missing that the rest of the world is roasting American English right back for being loud, slang-soaked, and grammatically chaotic. To anyone who actually studied the language, Americans sound like overconfident improv comedians shouting “bro,” “low-key,” and “circle back” while chewing half their consonants. The reality? Accent struggles are just what happens when humans learn new sound systems—but multilingual speakers know they’re adapting, and Americans keep assuming they’re the default. That’s the joke, and yes, everyone else is in on it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

Your thyroid is desperately trying to keep you alive and you’re out here ditching iodized salt for Himalayan pink nonsense that does absolutely nothing for you nutritionally. Eat some seafood, drink some dairy, have an egg — or at minimum stop throwing out the one salt that actually had a job to do. Plant foods are basically useless for iodine unless the soil happened to be in a good mood that season, and seaweed technically works but the iodine content varies so wildly it’s basically a surprise every time. If you’re vegan and salt-conscious and wondering why you feel like a fog machine with legs, this might be why. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

In this snarky takedown addressed to momma, we dismantle the myth of tariffs as patriotic magic that forces foreign countries like China to pay up, noting they’re simply taxes imposed by the U.S. government on imported goods, ultimately borne by American importers who pass the costs onto businesses and consumers through higher prices, disrupted supply chains, and squeezed suppliers. The revenue flows into the U.S. Treasury like any tax, funding government operations rather than serving as “tribute” from abroad, highlighting the hypocrisy of tax-haters cheering tariffs as a disguised border levy. Trump’s overuse of tariffs as a blunt tool for trade, foreign policy, and politics is mocked as rally-fodder that ignored economic realities, culminating in a Supreme Court rebuke for exceeding presidential authority under the Constitution, which reserves broad taxing powers for Congress. Overall, tariffs are portrayed as politically seductive “punishment” for outsiders but economically self-sabotaging. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

Oh for f**k’s sake, Trump issued some grand executive directive demanding the Pentagon cough up all its alien files, which sounds exciting until you remember this whole circus was triggered by Obama casually musing on a podcast that space is big and aliens are probably a thing statistically—before immediately walking it back—and Trump, allergic to letting anyone else have a news cycle, responded with a Truth Social post that reads like a late-night infomercial promising the biggest disclosure dump in history, which will almost certainly reveal nothing more thrilling than Cold War spy drones and some birds behaving suspiciously, because every official government report from the Pentagon to NASA keeps coming back with the same cosmic shrug of “zero evidence of extraterrestrial anything,” and yet here we all are, refreshing our feeds like idiots, waiting for the truth that’s been “just around the corner” for seventy goddamn years. 🛸 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

Science suggests the reason certain songs get stuck in your head isn’t magic — it’s math. Catchy tracks rely on symmetry, repetition, and small predictable variations that your brain quickly recognizes and rewards with a dopamine hit, which makes them feel satisfying and memorable at first. The same formula behind hits like “Baby Shark,” “Call Me Maybe,” “Happy,” and “Let It Go,” plus ultra-short TikTok hooks, is intentionally used because simple, repeatable structures spread fast and are easy to sing, loop, and market. But once you’ve heard them too many times, the novelty disappears, and what once felt catchy turns irritating because your brain has already “solved” the pattern. In other words, earworms aren’t accidents — they’re engineered using the exact brain-friendly patterns that make music addictive and, eventually, unbearable. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

In this savage, profanity-laced rant, we tear into the absurd hero worship of Olympic snowboarders and other “athletes” who get paid millions to slide down hills, spin in circles, and preach that “confidence is everything” in cringey 15-second ads. While these trust-fund shredders rake in sponsorship cash for not face-planting at 70 mph, real heroes—doctors grinding 100-hour weeks, engineers keeping bridges from collapsing, scientists fighting superbugs in fluorescent dungeons, and teachers wrangling feral kids for peanuts—get ignored, underpaid, and defunded. We build billion-dollar stadiums to glorify nacho-fueled couch rage, chant “USA! USA!” like it proves moral superiority, and buy $200 “confidence” hoodies… all while the planet burns and actual societal contributors get screwed. Time to redirect the drooling worship to people who aren’t literally getting paid to cosplay as human snowballs. Buckle up for maximum eye-rolls, zero fucks, and a full-throttle roast of priorities gone to hell. 🙄 Go team, you beautiful disasters.#Olympics #Sarcasm #Rant #AthleteWorship #RealHeroes #FuckOlympicse This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

In this unfiltered roast, the author traces the timeless stupidity of white hip-hop obsessives back to the 1990s, when Wall Street investment bros in pleated khakis and boat shoes rolled into the hood trying to buy nickel bags from actual dealers, dropping awkward Tribe Called Quest lines and getting mercilessly laughed off the block for their failed assimilation attempts. Fast-forward to today and the same midwit energy persists—only now it’s $400 Off-White fits, mispronounced slang, Genius.com-level “analysis,” and performative AAVE in the group chat—while these culture tourists still treat proximity to Black pain and street cred as a personality upgrade, never realizing they’re just cosplaying authenticity they were never equipped to handle. From 90s nickel-bag clowns to modern lyrical-miracle evangelists in dad hats, the core delusion remains: thinking stolen slang and playlist flexing equals depth, when really they’re still the punchline—now just memed in private Discords instead of laughed at on the corner. Final verdict: log off, delete the “Real Hip Hop Only” playlist, and stop larping as something the culture never asked for. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

In this episode, we unpack the growing urge many Americans feel to look beyond the U.S. for a calmer, more affordable life—and why Greece keeps popping up as the “Mediterranean retirement cheat code.” We break down the real math behind relocating, from Golden Visa investment options and startup costs to a realistic monthly budget, healthcare expectations, and where you’d actually want to live (Athens for access, Thessaloniki for balance, Crete for lifestyle). We also talk about the parts travel blogs gloss over—bureaucracy, slower pace, language barriers, and the emotional reality of leaving home. Bottom line: retiring abroad isn’t a fantasy vacation, it’s a trade—swapping American intensity for lower daily costs, simpler living, and more time. Whether it’s Greece or somewhere else, the bigger message is about building options before you need them.. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

Elon Musk has long called bullshit on the idea that a four-year college degree is the golden ticket to success in America, bluntly declaring college "overrated" and its value "somewhat overweighted." The billionaire—who snagged degrees from Penn but ditched Stanford's PhD after two days—argues that too many kids rack up massive debt for four years of partying and pointless lectures, only to graduate without jack-shit in practical skills that actually pay bills. Knowledge is free online now, he says, so skip the credential chase unless you're just there for the social scene, networking, or because you love the vibe (he even lets his own kids go for that reason). At Tesla and SpaceX, he hires based on proven badassery—ship code, build rockets, solve real problems—not diplomas, and he praises trades like electricians, plumbers, and carpenters as way more essential than another poli-sci major. With student debt crushing souls, underemployment hitting recent grads hard, and AI set to obsolete a ton of white-collar bullshit in the coming years, Musk's take is savage but spot-on: the old "go to college or fail" promise is a relic, and real winners obsess over hard problems, learn voraciously anywhere, and prove their worth through output—not some framed receipt from the ivory tower. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

In this snarky take, we challenge the feel-good myth that “money can’t buy happiness,” arguing that while cash doesn’t create joy by itself, it absolutely buys the conditions that make it possible—safety, security, time, autonomy, healthcare, and freedom from constant financial stress. The post calls out the privilege behind dismissing money’s importance and reframes wealth as the infrastructure of a stable life, not the destination, emphasizing that relationships, purpose, and fulfillment flourish far more easily when survival isn’t the main focus. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

AI leaders like Mustafa Suleyman, Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, and Jensen Huang are ALL warning that AI will rapidly automate large portions of white-collar work, reshape most jobs, and compress decades of workforce change into just a few years. While they don’t all predict immediate job loss, they consistently agree the nature of work is shifting fast — and society isn’t fully prepared for the impact. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

Let’s talk about the thing fools celebrate every spring like they just hit the lottery: the IRS refund.You know, the one where grown adults post screenshots of their deposit like they just outsmarted the system… when in reality they just got their own money back after letting the government hang onto it for a year.Interest-free.No perks. No miles. No points. No thank-you note. Just a delayed return of cash that was yours to begin with.And somehow this is framed as a “win.”What the fuck is wrong with you people? It’s definitely not a win. It’s the financial equivalent of clapping when the cashier hands you the correct change.Here’s what actually happens: you overpay taxes all year long because your withholding is set too high. The government takes more than necessary out of every paycheck, sits on it for months, and then gives it back after using it as a free operating loan. Meanwhile, you could’ve been investing it, paying down debt, building an emergency fund, or at minimum earning interest in a savings account.Instead, you basically volunteered to be Uncle Sam’s zero-percent credit line.And then you celebrate the repayment. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

So my daughter got caught up with some 30-something bro with a shitty beard. You know, that tiny patch of pubic hair on his chin that will never become a real fucking beard? I mean, what do you even do with that shit? And the stringy pubes over his upper lip were even worse. It's like a 12 year-old who's scared to death to shave it because he's afraid it'll never grow back. Turns out i was right - again. Bro was an assclown. Lazy, low effort, unfaithful. She finally figured it out after burning away a year of her life. She swears I never told her but I totally did. She hates when I'm right. It's just life, bro. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

I watched a friend’s 20-something daughter ask several relatives for money and favors at a party. She has a college degree but decided she didn’t want to become a dental hygienist after all because school was “too hard,” so she hasn’t done shit in over six months and has been sponging off her parents who are too much of a pussy to call her out. My kid said her buddy learned that most people have a hard time saying “no” and that asking people for things usually get people whatever they wanted. And guess where she learned that bullshit? TikTok has become America’s co-parent—except it doesn’t pay child support, it doesn’t follow bedtime rules, and it definitely doesn’t give a shit if your kid can read above a 4th-grade level.And spare me the “just monitor your children” lecture. You can’t. Go ahead and try parental controls, “check their phone,” and do the whole Responsible Adult Theater routine… and your kid will still see everything you tried to hide, and you will have absolutely zero fucking clue what they saw. The product isn’t the videos. The product is your child’s attention span—harvested, shaped, and sold back to them on an infinite loop. And America’s best friend, China, figure out exactly how to completely nuke two future generations of Americans into a lifetime of stupidity without firing a single shot.Sound familiar? Sun Tzu said the highest form of warfare is winning without fighting. Congratulations: we’ve managed to lose without even noticing. (Yes, we've discussed this before on this blog.)Back when media had adults in the roomIn the old days, the cultural pipeline had at least some guardrails:* TV shows were chained to advertisers. If a network got too out of hand, sponsors yanked money, and the problem fixed itself. But they never got there. Remember “censors?”* Newspapers and magazines had editors who could be fired and publishers who could be sued. Facts were checked. Lies were punished punitively.* And the government, you know, that elected entity that used to look out for its citizens and stop shit like this, hovered around the edges with rules and pressure points.Kids couldn’t usually stray far from teachings of parents, schools, neighborhood kids, and churches. And if they did, Mom and Dad knew exactly who to rip into to straighten things out. If a kid did somehow get corrupted, it was usually by the classic villain: that one shady student at school who whispered something awful on the playground. But even that kid had limits. He didn’t have an algorithm. He didn’t have 170 million users. He didn’t have a dopamine lab optimizing his delivery schedule.Now? The babysitter is the battlefield.These social networks are what happens when you take child development and hand it to a machine that’s aggressively optimized to keep someone watching—not learning, not thriving, not sleeping, not becoming a functional adult. One minute it’s “life hacks,” the next it’s hypersexualized content, doom spirals, conspiracy sludge, or whatever new “challenge” is currently trying to turn emergency rooms into influencer studios. The feed doesn’t need your permission. It doesn’t need your kid to search for it. It just delivers as much bullshit as your idiot child will digest. Parents are playing checkers. The algorithm is playing behavioral chess blindfolded with two queens. You can’t beat it.And here’s the part that should make you sit up:We pointed out before that China’s version of TikTok (Douyin) is widely described as pushing educational/“productive” content—while the export version feeds us the digital equivalent of sugar and energy drinks. So, who’s the sucker? Just to recap the vibe:* China’s kids: “science, math, achievement, national pride.”* Our kids: “watch me point at floating text for 8 hours.”Raising your enemy’s children in a manner that destroys their capabilities is a textbook Sun Tzu strategy. And it’s working. My buddy’s daughter has become a lazy, brainless mooch.“But it’s just entertainment!”Right. And heroin is just for “relaxing.”Remember that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, was based in China—where state access to data is… let’s call it “not optional.” Whether you think that’s exaggeration or understatement, the strategic anxiety is the same: we’re letting a foreign-made influence machine set the emotional tone and attention habits of a generation. President Orange has now converted this money machine into a business that American oligarchs can profit from, but the shit won’t change. Non-educational, potentially harmful social media bullshit will still raise American kids. Not because parents don’t care. But because no parent can out-moderate an algorithm that never sleeps.And that, my friends, is the most Art-of-War thing imaginable: no tanks, no bombs, no bullets—just a glowing rectangle quietly turning a superpower into a nation of exhausted goldfish. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

I had another fever dream last night that made me realize how stupid we are. Look, I’m going to lay this out for the uninformed one more time, but let’s be real: MAGA is currently doing a backflip into a dumpster fire.While you were trying to figure out if your neighbor’s TikTok dance was a deepfake, the global fraud industry officially hit its “industrial revolution” phase. Between 2024 and early 2026, internet crime stopped being a hobby for bored hackers and became a $16.6 billion-a-year empire. According to the FBI’s latest IC3 data, losses jumped 33% in a single year. We’re talking about $6.5 billion lost just to investment fraud and another $5 billion siphoned directly out of the pockets of people over 60.But here’s where the “snark” meets the “sad reality.”While American seniors are losing their life savings to “Pig Butchering” compounds in Southeast Asia—fortified “fraud factories” that generate nearly 40% of the combined GDP of countries like Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos—our government has decided the real priority is a different kind of border.The Great Budgetary Bait-and-SwitchIn 2025, Congress passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA). It’s a masterclass in misplaced aggression. They earmarked $170 billion for immigration and border enforcement. To give you some perspective, that’s more than the annual budget for every single local and state law enforcement agency in the U.S. combined.* ICE & CBP: Received a combined $140 billion through the OBBBA. ICE’s annual budget is now roughly $27.7 billion, which is triple what it was just two years ago.* The FBI: Meanwhile, the people actually tasked with chasing the $16.6 billion cyber-syndicates are facing a $545 million budget cut and the elimination of 1,500 positions.So, while we’re spending $45 billion to build new detention centers to hold people who are just trying to pick your produce, we’re effectively defunding the “Digital Border Patrol” that’s supposed to stop your retirement account from being liquidated by a bot in Myanmar.The Taxpayer IronyAnd let’s talk about those “hard-working immigrants” for a second. While they’re the primary target of this record-breaking $170 billion enforcement machine, they’re also the ones subsidizing the very system that’s hunting them.* In 2022 alone, undocumented immigrants paid nearly $97 billion in federal, state, and local taxes.* That includes $25.7 billion into Social Security—a program they literally aren’t allowed to use.Essentially, the government is using tax money from people who can’t access benefits to fund a massive deportation machine, all while leaving the “front door” wide open for AI-powered scammers to rob American citizens. It’s a bold strategy to prioritize hunting down a guy at a construction site over the “Smishing Triads” who used a $500 kit to scam millions of Americans via E-ZPass texts.The AI CatalystThe scammers aren’t exactly waiting for us to catch up. They’ve weaponized AI to make their operations 4.5 times more profitable than traditional scams. We’ve seen a 1,210% surge in AI-enabled fraud in just the last year. These “Pig Butchering” operations aren’t just scams; they’re human trafficking nightmares. Over 300,000 people are currently held in these compounds, forced to work 16-hour days sending you “wrong number” texts that lead to you losing your house.The bottom line? We are spending record-breaking billions to target a tax-paying workforce while the actual “threat to the American way of life”—the systematic siphoning of billions of dollars to transnational criminal syndicates—is being met with budget cuts and 1,500 fewer FBI agents. But hey, at least we’ll have a really expensive fence to look at while our bank accounts read zero.Would you like me to pull the state-by-state tax contribution data for Texas or Florida to show you exactly how much those “targets” are paying into the states currently getting hit hardest by fraud? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

Let’s have an honest conversation about Americans and American innovation. People love to argue about who built this country, usually while wearing a red hat with white embroidery made in China and shouting at a phone designed in California by a guy from Syria’s son.If we look at the raw data, the historical narrative is clear: The United States is the greatest group project in human history, specifically because the guys who assigned the project—the British—were useless. Here is the unvarnished, no-filter, historical truth about who actually built the American machine. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

GTA 6 is shaping up to be the ultimate clusterfuck of hype and hypocrisy. Woke whiners are losing their minds over a Latina protagonist and toned-down transphobic jokes, screaming about DEI training ruining the series’ sacred satire. And YouTube’s new puritan rules are ready to demonetize every violent clip. It’s all set in a Florida parody that’s bound to piss off everyone except those parents raising their precious 8 year-old children, who they’ve pawned off on video games so they can suck their weed vapes with their loser friends, proving Rockstar is an expert profiting off chaos.What those stupid fucking 8 year-olds don’t understand is respawning doesn’t happen in real life.Which led me to thinking about the insane state of violence in America. The wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of humanity. The land of the free, home of the brave, and apparently an eternal goddamn battlefield where we’re all just one bad day away from starring in our own real-life action flick in some random restaurant, workplace, school, or post office. Just turn on the news and you’ll agree we happily live in a fucked up culture of violence.Many folks skip the news for that reason. Ironically those same current-event ignorant idiots are the first to binge watch The Walking Dead, Narcos, and Spartacus on Netflix, widely regarded as the most violent shows ever shown to humanity.But shouldn’t our government protect us? I mean, isn’t that their job? Half of those spineless pussies are unwilling and the other half unable to address the causes or tools of violence. The real national shame isn’t the bloodshed—it’s the pathetic political theater we trot out after the bodies hit the floor.The American screen isn’t just birthing evil; it’s just a shiny, overpriced mirror reflecting our collective fuck-up as a nation.Dancing With Politicians: Seriously, We’re Still Doing This?Every time the inevitable happens—some horrific, lethal violence—you can set your watch by the political puppet show. Before the first piece of meaningful data is gathered, the hunt for the scapegoat begins. And guess what? It always, always lands on video games. Not films, not television shows, but video games.This tired, predictable pivot is a perfectly choreographed act of political stagecraft. It’s the easiest, laziest way for politicians to check the “I care!” box while successfully rerouting the conversation away from things that are politically inconvenient: like the utterly unchecked gun proliferation or the soul-crushing reality of structural and income inequality.We’re not debating whether aggressive imagery exists. Duh, it does. And although we still won’t do the hard research to determine its long-term effect, we’re debating whether the obsession with regulating a Mature 17+ rating is a deliberate, expensive distraction from the fact that this nation is drowning in guns and festering in economic disparity. If Washington spends its legislative capital debating the precise lighting on a cartoon explosion, it guarantees no one will notice that completely legal guns are the things actually killing people and they’re fucking everywhere.When Road Runner Drops An Anvil On Your HeadThe ubiquity of media violence isn’t a cultural accident; it’s a profitable, industrial output. The real kicker? The problem isn’t where you think it is. The prevailing narrative blames adult-rated media, but the violence problem peaks in content specifically aimed at CHILDREN. We were shocked to learn 76% of children’s programs contain violence, and a staggering 43% of the violence in children’s programming is framed as slapstick humor.Let’s be real: the most pervasive violence in children’s media is the stuff that gets the biggest laughs. Grievous physical harm is instantly reversed or magically consequence-free. I mean, just think about the classics that formed your own sense of humor. For a lot of us Gen-Xers, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote survived deadly explosions, being flattened by anvils that seemingly materialized from thin air, and falling thousands of feet off cliffs—only to be back up and plotting revenge in the next scene. Then there’s Tom and Jerry’s eternal hate-fuck: constant, ramping-up assaults where Tom gets zapped, axed into bits, or shot, just to end up sooty and scheming. It drills into kids’ heads that beating the shit out of your buddy is normal, fun, and totally reversible. Even for slightly older brats, The Simpsons served up Homer strangling Bart as the ultimate family gag—quick, no consequences, just laughs.Kids’ media actively teaches them that punching someone is a joke, a fun social action, and a great way to solve problems—thereby achieving the exact outcome critics fear most: the trivialization of harm.Then there’s the action-adventure block, where the violence is high-stakes and omnipresent, but carefully filtered to meet the sacred ‘no blood’ rule. When you watched your favorite action cartoons, like the original G.I. Joe or Transformers, the battles were massive, but the body count was conveniently zero (or close to it) for a reason. The heroes couldn’t just murder people, so the enemies were often robots, alien drones, or non-sentient vehicles—allowing them to be blown up en masse without triggering network censors or moral outrage. That’s right, you could vaporize a Decepticon, but only after ensuring the human pilot of the fighter jet had ejected safely (a recurring visual in shows where the goal was to sell toys, not dwell on death).Realistic weapons were swapped out for futuristic laser beams or non-lethal energy blasts. When a tank exploded, it was a flash of light, followed by the perfect silhouette of the crew running away. The omission of pain, injury, and medical attention is the entire point. This strategy creates a visual language where danger is constant, but risk is nonexistent. The message is clear: violence is thrilling, exciting, and utterly inconsequential.Now, thankfully, most of us have a semblance of common sense. This shit ain’t real. We were simply burning away hours of our lives when there was nothing funner going on. But there are those folks who sadly don’t and won’t get it. This kind of shit teaches some kids that violence between peers may be a normal, acceptable means of problem resolution. The extreme act happened, but the reality of the injury was always scrubbed clean. This high-volume, trivialized violence is what cultivates desensitization. It teaches moldable, young minds that aggression can be fun, easy, and completely consequence free.The irony that makes me want to punch a wall? Politicians rage over M-rated games when this sanitized poison was breakfast-table fodder for kids. The sheer volume of violent acts in children’s programming—the FCC and APA peg it at 20-26 acts per hour for kids’ shows—combined with the humor and no punishment, is a goddamn Ted Talk in normalizing aggression.For the film industry, violence is an economic model. Action films are cheap to localize for global markets, relying on universal explosions over culturally specific dialogue. They achieve this broad appeal by employing sanitization and trivialization: more than six out of every seven violent acts intentionally omit any consequences, such as blood or a hospital visit. This removes the link between cause and effect so the violence is thrilling without causing the viewer any emotional discomfort, cultivating desensitization.If games were the main cause of shootings, every GTA-playing country would be a warzone. Spoiler: they’re not. Sure, rare stabbings hit England trains, French markets, Belgian daycares—they aren’t immune, but it’s nowhere near the American carnage.The bright side is FBI data shows a 49% drop in the violent crime rate between 1993-2022. The only standout? Our astronomical number of guns. The good ol’ US of A has 120.5 guns per 100 people, the highest globally and double the next. Why in the fuck some American citizens feel the need to own more than one gun is beyond comprehension. The next war will probably be fought with biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons delivered via jet or drone, and your Confederate flag-flying ass will be too dead to load your assault rifle when gas-masked Commies come to raid your shit.So maybe it’s not just the pixels; it’s the legislative circle-jerk failing to control war tools.Aggression Algebra: How Many Violent Episodes Is Too Many?The political establishment consciously conflates separate findings. The American Psychological Association (APA) found a “small” association between violent video game use and low-level aggressive outcomes, like yelling and pushing. Most of these studies have small sample sizes and are primarily correlational and longitudinal, making it hard to establish causality, and do not weigh exposure to violence by other factors including parental political preferences and geographic location, overall family education or environment, genetics, or socioeconomic status. Some studies measure self-reported measures of violence exposure and behavior, which can introduce bias via recall inaccuracies or perceived social desirability.Many critics cite these findings as bullshit. In 2013, over 230 researchers from major universities (including Harvard, Yale, and Columbia) signed an open letter criticizing the APA’s task force and its methodology as “misleading and alarmist,” claiming the conclusions were based on “inconsistent or weak evidence.” Critics argue the APA’s task force members were not objective, pointing out that some members had previously made public statements or endorsed briefs arguing for a strong link between video games and violence. The accusation is that the task force was “stacked” with people who already held the fixed position.Critics consistently point out that if the link only leads to “yelling and pushing,” this finding is scientifically unhelpful and is deliberately over-amplified by the media and politicians to distract from the real issue: the proliferation of guns.On the other side, some politicians inflate this finding into a claim that video games may lead to lethal mass violence. Although evidence does not support this leap, causality is hard to prove, and research may be influenced by biases or advocacy. These shortcomings don’t invalidate the findings but highlight the need for more robust, longitudinal research with diverse samples.It is worth noting that The American Psychological Association (APA) is a massive professional organization that engages in significant political advocacy and lobbying at both the federal and state levels, so their human leadership could be subject to some sort of bias. This is an argument as to why AI should run organizations. But I digress.So, basically, no one really knows shit. The scientific community is clearly split. The APA uses its established authority to declare the link reliable, while a massive contingent of other academics essentially calls their report junk science that was designed to produce an alarmist result.The most important danger is the one that hasn’t really been studied at length - long-term desensitization to violence. When you look at some of the militant regimes throughout history, brainwashing citizens and soldiers through repeated exposure numbs the emotional response to violence, making it easier to perform and tolerate. Perfect example of normalcy bias, the same hive thinking that causes typical Christians to gather at Christmas mass and think when they die they’ll inherit a mansion in the sky, and Islamic soldiers to anticipate the arrival of their personal 72 houris upon the sacrifice of their lives.For desensitized aggression to escalate into a mass casualty event, it requires two elements: extreme structural stress, and immediate, easy access to tools of lethal force.Systemic Sickness: Evidence of Institutional ParalysisMedia violence is a product perfectly tailored for, and amplified by, a specific constellation of cultural and economic pathologies.Another critical accelerator is the reinforcement of rigid, toxic ideals of masculinity—the dangerous script that tells young men, “Do not express any emotion but aggression.” This cultural expectation creates emotional repression, leading to men feeling unable to discuss their problems and thus more likely to “explode.” Media is just the polished instructional manual for a cultural script already defined by dominance and competition.The core pathology is a self-sustaining feedback loop. Economic inequality creates stress, toxic masculinity provides the aggressive script, and the media industry mass-produces the visual language for that aggression leading to desensitization of the real-world outcomes.If you need current proof that the American love affair with guns creates a predictable cycle of carnage, look no further than recent events.The shocking story of the six-year-old first-grader who shot his teacher, Abby Zwerner, in Newport News, Virginia, is now exposing institutional rot. The question isn’t “How could a six-year-old get a gun?” (He found an unsecured gun at home). The real question is: When every single red flag is raised, why does institutional paralysis still win? The principal’s attorney is arguing it wasn’t “foreseeable.” The resulting $40 million lawsuit isn’t against the child, but the former assistant principal, who is accused of ignoring multiple warnings that morning that the student had a gun. Four different people allegedly warned the administration, who had the authority to act, but didn’t.Apparently, a six-year-old with a gun in class is just a tragic accident, not gross negligence in a country drowning in firearms.Nine people were injured by gunfire at a birthday party in an Airbnb in northeastern Ohio. This was one of at least 365 mass shootings (defined as four or more victims) in the US so far this year. A simple teenager’s birthday party can, and often does, devolve into a multi-victim shooting.While this carnage dominates headlines, the current administration has recently cut over $800 million in grants for community-based organizations that work to prevent violence, including removing the former Surgeon General’s advisory on gun violence as a public health issue.We’re ignoring warnings that lead to a child shooting a teacher, we’re racking up hundreds of mass shootings, and we’re simultaneously cutting funding for the community groups that actually try to intervene. All the ingredients needed for a perfect storm of violence.A Call for Legislative Integrity: NUKE The SwampIf the American Government were serious about mitigating violence, in addition to attempting to restrict violent games and programming from those most apt to be influenced, it would dedicate more resources to the structural and behavioral pathologies. The current legislative reality confirms that the political establishment is currently prioritizing the commerce of lethal weaponry over the integrity of public safety.The solution is clear, but sadly politically inconvenient.* Mandatory Cognitive Defense: Federally fund and implement mandatory K-12 media literacy programs to teach students to deconstruct the narrative intent and recognize their own desensitization. Teach kids to spot BS before it turns them into desensitized consumers of conflict.* Public Health Intervention: Formally designate income inequality as a primary public health crisis driving violence. Funnel money into integrative conflict resolution and mental health programs to explicitly combat the emotional repression linked to toxic masculinity. Give boys the vocabulary to feel things other than rage.* Legislative Integrity: Repeal laws protecting the gun industry and reverse limitations on background checks. Lethal means control is the only proven method to distinguish U.S. violence rates from the rest of the developed world.If you expected Washington to have seized on national shame to deliver comprehensive gun reform, you’re looking at the wrong country. Legislative action in the U.S. Congress remains highly polarized, with a significant focus on rolling back previous gun safety measures rather than advancing new ones.Bills aimed at strengthening gun safety are typically introduced by Democratic members, often in the House of Representatives, and are generally stalled in committee without receiving a vote from the full chamber.The “Office of Gun Violence Prevention Act of 2025” (H.R. 1307) was introduced in the House and referred to the House Judiciary Committee in February 2025. The goal is to establish a dedicated federal office to coordinate gun violence prevention efforts. It’s a noble attempt to put a dedicated adult in charge of the chaos, but it has the same chance of passing as a bill to ban all political self-interest. It’s likely dead in the committee room.Advocacy groups continue to push for measures like Universal Background Checks (closing loopholes), a Ban on Assault Weapons and Large-Capacity Magazines, and Repealing the Gun Industry’s Immunity from liability. These bills are the legislative equivalent of a polite, strongly worded letter—necessary to introduce for the record, but functionally useless given the current partisan math in Congress.The most active legislative efforts are centered on dismantling or limiting the few existing federal restrictions. This confirms the critique that the political establishment is prioritizing the commerce of lethal weaponry over public safety.The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024, extended a provision that prohibits the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) from reporting a person to the NICS background check database based on mental incompetency unless there is a judicial finding that the person is a danger. They’ve actively ensured that the federal government’s ability to keep guns out of the hands of unstable veterans is handcuffed, prioritizing the right to own a weapon over the basic safety of the public (and the veterans themselves).The current administration and allied legislators have been attempting to roll back the progress of the 2022 BSCA, which was the most significant federal gun safety legislation in decades. This includes efforts to defund and undermine the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) and repeal BSCA provisions that block gun sales to prohibited purchasers under age 21 and disarm more domestic abusers. The moment Congress passed a compromise bill, the fight immediately shifted to making sure it couldn’t actually work. Why pass a law if you can’t immediately try to burn it down?The Department of Justice has cut over $800 million in grants for community-based violence prevention organizations, shifting funding priorities from “comprehensive, community-based prevention” to supporting “law enforcement efforts to reduce violent crime.” Instead of investing in the structural and cultural roots of violence, the government is defunding the people who treat the disease and instead writing a blank check to police departments to manage the symptoms.Since Congress can’t, or won’t, act, the fight over gun policy is being waged through court rulings and state legislation, creating a messy, unpredictable patchwork of laws.The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) upheld the ATF’s rule requiring serial numbers and background checks for certain “ghost gun” parts (unfinished receivers). SCOTUS later overturned the ATF’s 2019 ban on bump stocks (devices that effectively convert semi-automatic rifles into machine guns). This re-legalized them in many states.States like Oregon and Washington are actively passing laws to ban rapid-fire devices, implement stricter permitting, and address ghost guns, creating a significant legal disparity between different parts of the country.Federal gun safety legislation that would meaningfully reduce the U.S. rate of lethal violence is stagnant or moving backward in Congress in late 2025. The focus remains on political theater—defending gun access and cutting prevention funding—rather than addressing the fundamental determinants of violence.Until that pivot occurs, cease viewing the screen as a source of evil and start viewing it as a highly polished, very expensive mirror reflecting a national shame.The Double-Edged Sword to SuccessLook, there are thousands of fundamental problems in a free, capitalist society driven by greed and the pursuit of power and notoriety. Some religions call these sins, yet continue to stand behind the shield of a crucifix. Regardless, there are two things that need to be fixed to elevate America to its former greatness, and create any hope of a great tomorrow.First, can the media finally quit jerking off to bloodbaths and start stroking some actual brain cells? Ditch the lazy-ass explosions and shove in some science, math, history, space, nature, geology, religion, exploration—the world’s already a goddamn miracle factory without needing to splatter guts for ratings. Yeah, it’s not as brain-dead easy as blasting a hole through someone’s skull, but maybe—just maybe—stopping the desensitization conveyor belt might raise kids who solve problems instead of becoming them.And secondly, let’s finally put the Second Amendment out of its 200-year misery, because nothing says “urgent civic duty” like cosplaying the Minutemen while dodging drone strikes. Last I checked, the Redcoats will probably never goose-step down Main Street again, and the only thing you’re going to overthrow is your blood pressure. Who the hell do you think you’re gonna pop without the FBI turning your crib into a Dateline special? Keep your little pew-pew toys for sport if you must, but get licensed, get checked, and lock that shit up tighter than a toddler-proofed liquor cabinet, unless you want your eight-year-old starting a school supply drive with live ammo.Until then, come visit me in Italy. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

Thanks for killing 30 million trees a year. Jesus must fucking HATE pine trees!A friend of mine sent a comical photo of Santa Claus decked out in his most aggressively red holiday splendor, complete with the letters “Santa” misspelled by some Asian marketing bro as the name “Satan.” At first, I didn’t think much of it. Then, as one of our kids planted her ass on our couch and waited for someone to bring her stack of presents, I realized what a horrible, disgusting, and embarrassing display of greed and entitlement the Christian celebration of its savior’s birth has become.So saddle up, heat up a warm cup of brandy and milk, because you’re fixin’ to need it, and listen to our twisted take of the modern day history of Christmas. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

I’ve lived in the deep south for about a year now. Yes, it is exactly the shitshow you’ve heard it is. These people are truly fucking stupid. Descendents of the original British North American terrorist invaders with names like Mason, Dixon, Smith, and Wesson, they’ve become fat, lazy, and incredibly wealthy, finally selling off the family farms to HOA developers. Now that they’re floating in cash, they have no reason to study or improve themselves, and think the 135 assault rifles scattered across the living room will protect them from people like you trying to take their money.But what’s truly interesting is that there’s a certain kind of woman born below the Mason-Dixon Line who believes her destiny was written in cursive — probably on a wedding invitation embossed with magnolias. She’s the Southern Bless Your Heart Barbie: a living, breathing cocktail of charm, manipulation, and delusion, garnished with a lemon wedge and a splash of Chardonnay.With absolutely zero aspirations for anything remotely responsible, these women may be the dumbest humans ever born on this planet. Case in point, let’s follow the life of one of my neighbors. To protect her fragile soul, we’ll just call her Bless Your Heart Barbie.Act I: The Debut of the DelusionFrom birth, Bless Your Heart Barbie is trained like a prize horse — not to run, but to pose. She’s told she’s special, precious, chosen. Every hair bow, pageant crown, and “You’re such a pretty girl!” lays another brick in the mansion of her twisted fucking ego.By high school, she has perfected the art of competitive femininity. Her social life is a pyramid of validation: looks, money, and practicing writing her first name next to the handsome college-bound quarterback’s last name. Her classmates might study calculus, but this bimbo studies the fine art of pretending to be helpless while expertly destroying a lesser girl’s psyche and reputation.Bless Your Heart Barbie scores a 750 on her SAT with a GPA somewhere around 2.1 and uses ChatGPT to write her college essay without editing a thing, and somehow secures a legacy admission to her BF’s college, taking a spot away from a much more deserving candidate who actually wants to learn something, forcing her to settle for some shitty community college.When the quarterback proposes sometime before finishing his college football degree, sometimes even before finishing his proposal sentence — she beams like a legit goddess. She’s won the lottery! She secured the bag. Her mother cries tears of joy. Her father cuts the deposit checks. She buys a gigantic wall calendar that counts down the days until her storybook wedding that’ll cost as much as a modest home.And Bless Your Heart Barbie’s faux friends start counting down the days until she inevitably cheats on him with some rando CrossFit instructor.Act II: The Queen of the SubdivisionSo at first, her marriage is everything she dreamed, if her dreams were written by a Hallmark intern hooked on Xanies. Her third-string quarterback hubby fails to get drafted by the NFL, but he’s semi-famous enough to score a swanky sales position from some douchebag who wears the same socks. Dad fronts a huge down payment and Bless Your Heart Barbie moves into a McMansion with a name like The Whispering Oaks at Summit Mountain Ridge, where every front double-door has two wreaths, and every neighbor has the same haircut.She pops out a kid or two and proudly displays them to anyone who will look as some sort of prized ornament. All her biddy friends compliment her kids, saying the same tired shit people said to Bless Your Heart Barbie growing up, because that’s just what you do. The focus shifts away from her and to the babies, but she’s cool with that. For now.Bless Your Heart Barbie’s Instagram bio now reads: Wife. Mama. Coffee addict. Blessed. But the underlying bio, one that she hasn’t quite yet realized is: I have no identity outside of my husband and children, and tequila is the only thing keeping me from faking my own disappearance.Days blur into a loop of casseroles, Target runs, PTA drama, refereeing kid arguments, and pondering whether Chad’s stupid fucking fantasy football league really counts as work.Act III: The Cracks AppearThen one day, something terrifying happens — the kids no longer fit into car seats. They’re not quite as cute and showy as they once were. They begin to become self-sufficient. Her tiny disciples no longer need bows, snack bags, or constant supervision. They decide hanging out with Mom is boring AF. Dad’s out of the house 60% of the time, either traveling for his shitty sales job or on a triad outing (fishing, hunting, or golf) with his equally asshole workbros.Suddenly, Bless Your Heart Barbie is left alone in a silent house, an emotionally unavailable husband, and a mirror that’s no longer magically filtering her reflection through the haze of youth.This is where Bless Your Heart Barbie begins to unravel. The Pilates classes increase. The smiles look strained through the lines on her face. The word “wellness” becomes a euphemism for denial. She posts quotes about “finding herself,” but what she really finds is an ocean of regret — the kind that smells faintly of dry shampoo and Chardonnay.Her therapist suggests hobbies. She joins a book club that quickly devolves into a wine-drunk gossip circle where everyone pretends they’re not imagining life as a Florida divorcee banging a much younger pool boy named Javier.Act IV: The Existential DeclineBy her mid-30s, she’s fighting time like it’s her husband’s mistress, and she’s pretty sure he has one, but denial wins for now. Botox, fillers, facials — anything to keep the illusion alive. The town whispers about her hot dog-looking lips and sunken eyes that she calls “self-care.”The problem with building your identity around beauty and attention is that both expire — and she’s watching the clock tick in real time. Sadly, with Bless Your Heart Barbie blondes and redheads, that clock tends to move a lot faster than it does with brunettes.Her husband’s midlife crisis involves a Corvette and week-long trips to a “hunting lodge” with the bros. Hers involves Googling “spiritual retreats in Sedona” and briefly considering joining a pyramid scheme disguised as a skincare brand.Her Instagram captions shift from “Family is everything ❤️” to “Sometimes you have to lose yourself to find yourself 💫,” which translates to “My marriage is prolly dead and so is my fucking soul.”Act V: The FallEventually, Bless Your Heart Barbie becomes what she was always destined to be: a ghost in Lululemon. No one looks at her like they used to in her prime. Smatter of fact, she doesn’t even like to look at herself. She haunts the aisles of Whole Foods, clutching overpriced kombucha, rehearsing the story of how she “almost went to med school.”Bless Your Heart Barbie, although she’s bitchy as fuck, really isn’t a villain. She’s more of a victim of a culture that told her her only worth came from her reflection and her proximity to a man with money.But as the mirror grows less forgiving, so does life. Her kingdom of appearances crumbles. The crown rusts. The pearls lose their shine.She smiles politely at the next generation of Bless Your Heart Barbies — the ones still painting their faces and their futures with pastel delusion — and whispers under her breath while walking through Target, “Oh, bless your little heart. Don’t blink, sweetie. It all goes faster than a facelift appointment.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

Look, we need to talk about sex robots. Not because they’re going to “replace women” in relationships, though, let’s be honest, after what I’ve been through, that wouldn’t break my heart. But because the hype around them exposes the raw underbelly of relationships, tech fantasies, and the endless ways humans disappoint each other. As someone who’s been divorced three times—my first wife trapping me in a shotgun marriage and 18+ years of child support for a kid who turned out not to be mine—I’ve got a front-row seat to human relationship shitshows.And yeah, I won’t really miss women when AI steps in, programmed to be just catty enough to feel real but responsive enough to stroke men’s fragile egos without the fallout.Where We’re Actually At (Hint: Not Nearly Soon Enough)As of 2025, the pinnacle of “sex robots” is still just a disappointing, glorified blow-up doll with a Chinese heater and scripted moans—a RealDoll on steroids, minus the soul-crushing betrayal. It’s not some Blade Runner dream; it’s a lonely bro consolation prize.If you remember that porn built the internet, you’ll know sex bots are the next accelerated technology boom. And, most likely robot soldiers too.Sometime before 2029, expect fancier chatbots bolted onto the semi-lifeless shells, with motors that jerk like a nervous system affliction. A sex bot will be a doll that remembers your name and whispers sweet nothings you programmed yourself, or maybe in a voice you bought a subscription to from OnlyFans.However, with the surprising advances in deepfakes and AI music, I suspect things may be a little more smokin’ than that by ‘29.Between 2030 and 2034, robotics will develop smoother motions, and probably even AI that fakes empathy well enough to pass a Turing. But she’ll still cost a small fortune. And that uncanny stare? Meh, the lights will be out, so who cares? But if you do catch the stare, it may temporarily remind you of every d-bag ex who looked right through you. Like with all weird things, we’ll get used to it.In or around 2035, if humanity hasn’t killed ourselves by then fighting over some invisible bearded man in the sky, we’ve probably cracked the code on batteries, brains, and budgets. And that’s where things really get interesting. Get ready for sci-fi wet dream territory. Fully lifelike androids that fuck like porn stars but don’t sue for alimony or drop paternity bombs.The “Physical Realism” ProblemNobody admits it, but building a robot that fools you into forgetting it’s fake is a nightmare wrapped in engineering hell.Human skin isn’t just pretty—it’s warm in spots, cool in others, it flushes and yields under your fingers. We’ve got materials that mimic the surface, but not the life underneath. And those tiny twitches, the ones that make a lover feel alive? It’s all fucking programmable, bro. Today’s bots are soulless machines, but there are already people working on tomorrow’s algorithms.“Replacement”? Hell Yes, Sign Me Up!The “sex robots will replace women” threat isn’t some incel fever dream—it’s a survival strategy for guys who are ignored or scorned, or burned by weddings that ended in courtrooms. If your “relationship” boils down to sex and ego boosts, why not swap in a bot that doesn’t ghost you for a better offer or hit you with DNA test reveals?What humans peddle as “real connection” often means:* Someone who pretends to care about your shitty day, until they don’t. AI chatbots can already fake this.* Forced laughs at jokes that bomb, masking their eye-rolls. Already done.* “Growth” that feels like endless therapy bills and compromises. AI is learning to learn your personality. That’s growth.* Memories tainted by lies and legal fees. Eschewed by ownership.* “Choice” that’s just inertia until the next guy shows up. Not a problem. Monogamy can be programmed.A robot won’t ambush you with a pregnancy scare over a kid that’s not yours. It won’t weaponize your vulnerabilities in divorce proceedings. It’ll simulate the sass—catty quips tailored to your insecurities—without the emotional landmines. And just when she’s about to go too far, she’ll know as she looks into your eyes and she’ll reset that shit, delivering make-up sex that’ll blow your mind.And then she’ll initiate the self-cleaning cycle, do the dishes, and take out the trash without ever making you feel guilty. Finally, something that caters to fragile male egos without demanding half your shit in return.Forget doomsday porn about “obsolete women.” Here’s the fallout from a guy who’s lived the prelude.For divorcees like me, drowning in alimony and resentment, this is liberation. No more navigating minefields of mixed signals or custody battles. It might trap the socially awkward deeper in isolation, but for the battle-scarred? Honestly? It’s fucking mercy.Sexbots won’t be niche— it’ll explode among men tired of the dating grind. Forget Tinder roulette; give me predictable pleasure over another round of heartbreak.Women might scoff, but hey, they’ll have their If we don’t all kill ourselves by then, we’ve probably cracked the code on batteries, brains, and budgets. And that’s where things really get fun. options too. They’ll be cool with that until her biological clock screams at them to have a baby, or peer pressure pushes her into a search for a donor (sucker). But men may no longer want to play that game. And that’s where things get messy.Look, valid angles will exist — think disabled folks, agoraphobes, or widowers piecing themselves back together. Hell, even jaded ex-husbands could use it as a bridge back to sanity. Hell, insurance might even cover it as therapy.The buzz around sex bots isn’t about tech; it’s rage at a system that chews up men and spits out payers. Women were the villains in my personal story, but let’s face it: it works both ways. The isolation epidemic hits everyone. Bots just highlight how we’re all starving for connection that doesn’t end in ruin.Dating apps were supposed to “revolutionize love,” right? Instead, they turned courtship into a swipe-right scam. Social media? It amplified every petty grudge into a public execution. VR? Still no substitute for flesh-and-blood friction, flaws included.Humans crave the chaos—the unpredictability that makes it real. But after three divorces, that “hardwired” pull feels more like a trap. Tech keeps dangling the easy out: intimacy minus the knives in your back. And damn if it doesn’t tempt.The Bottom LineSex bots will evolve, no doubt. Some will splurge, others will sneer. Will they “replace women” and upend everything? For guys like me, bots have already won—offering catty banter and ego-stroking submission without the betrayals that left me broke and childless in spirit.They’ll join the pile of human dodges: porn, apps, one-night stands. Pricey, fiddly, and overhyped, sure—but they promise what no ex ever did: control, without the vulnerability that got me wrecked. No risk of surprise lawsuits, no “growth” that costs your soul, no love that morphs into leverage.Me? I’ll take the upgrade. My three loved ones were unpredictable all right—unpredictably vicious. Flaws? Try felonies. I’ll be the first in line in 2035. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

Basically, Paranormal is the new catch-all term for shit we can’t explain with our current rulebook for the universe. Think of it as the universe’s spam folder. It’s probably just Matrix glitches, fortune teller scams, and our own brains fucking with us trying to establish patterns in chaos.Know what’s REALLY paranormal? Some asshole is actually convinced there's a Nigerian prince who really does want to give him a million dollars.Here’s the paranormal breakdown for mouth-breathers, with a very special guest those bearded, ballcap wearing, pickup truck driving bros will be very familiar with. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

So, my buddy’s mother-in-law swung by the other day, announcing she was in town for a very special "D" occasion. My first thought? Divorce, deportation, or maybe a good old-fashioned deposition. This may seem harsh, but if you knew her, you'd agree. This bitch deserved any of those three. But, nope. It was the OTHER D-word. The "D" all of us must face at one point or another. Death. Death is a fucking scam. I'll share thirteen ways all funerals are a complete rip off. Dead people don't really give a shit what you do with their rotting corpses. So why should we? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

We've got some very serious-sounding researchers hinting that the delightful concoction, HFCS, might be the obesity super-villain we've all been waiting for, possibly even giving cancer cells a turbo boost. Then you have the "it's all just sugar, bro, relax" squad.Who's right? Who fucking knows. Grab a Coke and a smile and let’s talk about that magical liquid gold that sweetens your favorite can of carbonated bliss. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

You may have heard in one of my many Dad Talks that humanity has barely reached adolescence. Our human minds are still evolving. We simply aren’t fully developed yet, and we’re not mature enough to grow to the next level. We’re about at the maturity of a really smart six year-old dog. Shit, that dog is smarter than we are.How do I know this? The main example I cite is our undying love affair with, well, killing each other. Why are humans so fucking fascinated with killing things? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

There’s a corrosive shift happening in our society. It’s in the halls of government, the boardrooms of corporations, the classrooms of our schools, and even in the way we interact with one another. It’s the slow, creeping death of accountability. The simple, foundational principle that actions have consequences, and that someone, somewhere, needs to take responsibility for them, is fading. The buck, it seems, stops nowhere. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

Let's be honest, American sexuality is a goddamn dumpster fire. We’re all walking on eggshells, so terrified of being the next weirdo on the neighborhood watch Facebook page that we can’t even have a normal conversation. The other day, a teenage girl started chatting with me while I was walking my dog. She was just being friendly, and I was scared shitless. What would the neighbors think? An adult man talking to a kid? She started it, for fuck's sake!Is that level of paranoia normal now?And while we’re at it, what’s the deal with titties? Why are men’s chests public property and women’s are a national secret? What kind of Puritanical holdover bullshit is that?There was some chatter after the last election about a "sex strike," inspired by South Korea’s 4B movement where women swore off men entirely. It was a bold idea that, of course, went absolutely nowhere. But here’s the thing: a massive shift between men and women has been brewing for a while. Women are quietly leading a drift away from traditional relationships, and the numbers don't lie.According to Pew Research, 38% of U.S. adults were unpartnered in 2019, up from 29% in 1990. Even crazier? Half of single adults weren't even looking to date. And get this: while 61% of single men were still desperately swiping right, only 38% of single women gave a damn. Romance isn't dead, but it’s definitely on a smoke break, and asexuality is on the rise.And I think I know why.The Fast, Feline, and FeministI’ve cracked the fucking code: Women who keep cats are more likely to be asexual.Think about it. There’s something suspicious about a woman who willingly cohabitates with a narcissistic, breath-stealing, fish-breath ball of hate fur. Cats are too damn independent to give you the unconditional love of a dog. They’ll vanish for a week, break your heart, and saunter back in like they own the fucking place.And yet, some women adore them. My neighbor walks hers on a leash. I have to physically restrain myself from laughing.A cat replaces a man. It has no needs other than food and a place to shit, which, let's face it, makes it significantly less needy than the average dude. Maybe that’s the turn-off.These cat women have a secret agenda: they’ve got shit to do, and sex just gums up the works. If your girlfriend suddenly brings a cat home, she’s not-so-subtly telling you that you’re too goddamn clingy.But here’s where it gets devious. They’ll still prowl for men, not for love, but for safety and financial security. They play a good game, making you think you’re important until you’re bagged and tagged. Cats are sneaky, and so are their keepers. As the great philosopher George W. Bush once said, “Fool me once, fool you twice, or fool you once, and…” Well, you get the point.Now, add running to the mix.A cat-keeping woman who runs is exponentially more asexual.Not only is she deflecting your affection with her furry little proxy, she bought new sneakers and is literally training to run away from it.Fellas, if you hate sex, harbor a secret STD, or are packing an unusually tiny ween, this fast feline feminist is your dream girl. For the rest of you, consider these two GINORMOUS red flags.A Field Guide to the Modern FeministI never met a real, vocal feminist until recently. We’ll call her Violet.Like a spoiled child, Violet always finds something to bitch about. This new wave of feminism is frighteningly similar to religious fundamentalism—an absolute, unshakeable conviction in its own flawed righteousness.So, what’s the big feminist fight today? Fucking catcalls.A tiny, loud-as-hell regiment of women believes unsolicited compliments should be a criminal offense. They’re so angry that it’s hard to tell who they are behind their anonymous social media profiles.Based on my observations of Violet, here’s my best guess at a profile of today’s feminist:* White women with short hair: They chop it all off to avoid male attention because, you guessed it, they’re probably asexual.* Natural blondes over 26: God is unkind to them as they age, and they take their hatred of wrinkles out on all of mankind.* Over-educated career women: They’re pissed they spent their prime childbearing years in a library.* Women who own cats: Again, a cat is a well-known heterosexual male repellent.* Women with jacked-up testosterone: She’s hyper-competitive and basically a dude, but she’s mad she’s not accepted as one.* Morbidly obese women (with short hair and cats): She’s tired of being called heavy and figures she has no chance with men anyway, so she’s hoping to hook up with the blonde over 26.Thanks to these fire-breathing broads, you can’t politely hold a door open, offer to help her carry something heavy, or especially tell any woman she looks nice without risking a lecture, or a rashambo. It’s a sad state of affairs. Women seem to be sending a message. It could be "I'm a lesbian," "I hate sex," or simply, "I have given up on everything."What’s a Horny Man to Do?So if women are checking out, what happens to we men left behind? Until the sexbots come down in price and get a wee-bit more realistic, which is totally coming, and we’ll talk about that in a sec - men got creative.Option 1: The Titty BarDaddy wants to get his groove on, but Mom’s libido mysteriously shut down right around the time the cat showed up and she started training for a 15k. Her "EXIT ONLY" sign is hung loud and clear. Dad sulks, contemplates divorce, then finds out most of his buddies are in the same damn boat.Solution? Rachel’s Steakhouse, baby! Cheap beer, prime rib, and a fat stack of cash make a lonely man feel worthy again. It’s all show business, of course. He can’t even touch the dancers. But for a few hours, he can pretend he’s still desirable. Some wives even fund the trip; it’s a small price to pay to not have to deal with messy, obligatory intercourse. He gets his rocks off inside of a tissue on the ride home, and she doesn't have to wash the sheets. Win-win.Option 2: The Mail-Order BrideThen there are guys like Fucking Fred. Retired, divorced, and lonely as all hell. After striking out locally, he remembered the "young, happy, beautiful, and submissive" whores from his time in the Philippines.Yes, ladies, he actually said "submissive."He tried an Asian dating site and immediately got scammed by a 26-year-old who "mysteriously disappeared" after he mailed her a laptop and cash. Undeterred, he paid for a "romance tour" and came back with photos of himself with a 31-year-old Chinese woman who was way out of his league. He went back to bring his new bride home on some hideous aberration of government called an engagement visa.I never saw Fred again. When I asked the mailman, he said someone returned his mail and it was marked "deceased."These arrangements are a psychological and monetary minefield built on desperation and fantasy. Can they lead to true happiness? Maybe. I saw a LOT of these 70 year-old men toting around much younger Filipino women in Florida. But I still have my fucking doubts.So there you have it. Women are replacing men with cats and cardio, and men are either buying wives or renting boobs.What a fucking time to be alive.BRING IN THE FEMBOTS!Fortunately, the proliferation of sex robots is in the very near future. Artificial intelligence and cloned human voices will drive the conversation however you want, and she won’t ever give a flying fuck what you say to her or want to talk about. Human-like skin and lips with hyper-realistic hydraulically alterable faces - and, um, certain appendages - that can perfectly resemble your favorite celebrity, porn star, or, well, let’s be real here, married neighbor or co-worker. Heaters built-in to generate that perfect 100 degree heat. Customizable pheromone ducts that you simply can’t resist. And most importantly, self-cleaning modes.AND your future sexbot will take care of cooking, doing the dishes, watching the kids, cleaning the house - all without ever bitching about it.Oh, to keep it interesting, she’ll feature an endless supply of “inputs,” some of which might only appear on the most twisted alien species any manga fan could imagine.The best part? She won’t ever want a cat.So, yeah, that’s all coming (pun intended).So, Violet, I hope you fucking enjoy the hell you’ve sown. Good luck out there. You’re fixin’ to need it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

Alright, buckle up fuckfaces, because I’m fixin’ to toss out a theological hand grenade: what if the freakin' crucifix, that sparkly bit of gold hanging around your grandma's neck and adorning every Catholic church known to humankind, is actually the goddamn Mark of the Beast?Now, for anyone who's actually cracked open the dusty pages of Revelation, or even just skimmed the Wikipedia entry, this sounds about as likely as finding a decent cup of coffee at a gas station in Bumfuck, Alabama.The Mark of the Beast, that lovely little sign-up sheet for the Antichrist's fan club, is supposed to be this horrible symbol of loyalty to a godless empire, preventing you from buying so much as a loaf of bread if you ain't stamped. It's rebellion against the supposed Almighty Jesus God, pure and simple.And then you've got the crucifix. Ya know, the symbol of Jesus getting nailed to a fucking plank? The whole point of it, according to, well, everyone who isn't currently huffing paint thinner, is God's ultimate sacrifice, for the love of humanity, forgiveness and redemption from our shitty human selves, and all that shit. Wearing that blinged out Jesus God Cross is supposed to be the opposite of rejecting God! It's the mascot of the whole damn fairytale!To suggest the Jesus God cross and the mark of the beast are the same is like saying a kitten and a rattlesnake are equally as cuddly.But hold the phone, because here's where things get fucking twisted. Let's dive headfirst into the gutter of cynicism for a hot minute.What if the whole Jesus God thing is a giant, elaborate, millennia-spanning crock of bullshit? What if it was all a big fat lie cooked up to keep you peasants in line, to make you accept your miserable existence in this life leads to a sparkly Jesus God McMansion in the clouds?Suddenly, that blinged-out crucifix takes on a far more sinister vibe. It's no longer a symbol of divine love; it's the goddamn logo of the scam! It's the branding iron of the most successful control mechanism in human history.Think about it, my fellow cynical bastards. That poor son of a bitch nailed to the cross becomes the ultimate guilt trip. "Look what he did for you! Now shut your goddamn mouth, put some cash in the collection plates, and don't question the folks in charge!"The whole narrative becomes a carefully constructed fairytale designed to breed obedience and stifle dissent. Suffer now, get your reward later. What a load of horseshit.In this utterly bleak and deeply suspicious scenario, the crucifix isn't some holy relic; it's the goddamn tool of oppression. It's the constant, gleaming reminder of the lie you're supposed to swallow whole. It’s the banner under which the powerful pull the strings and fleece the morons.And what about the Mark of the Beast in this godless, manufactured reality? Well, it ain't gonna be some barcode or microchip. It's the damn belief itself! The "mark on the forehead" is the unquestioning acceptance of the dogma, the intellectual surrender to the fabricated reality. The "mark on the hand" is living and acting in accordance with the rules set down by the puppet masters behind the curtain, perpetuating the lie with every goddamn action.So, in this fucked-up alternative universe where Jesus God Christ is a cosmic con job, yeah, you could make a pretty damn compelling, and deeply depressing, argument that embracing the crucifix is, in essence, accepting the Mark. It's showing your unwavering loyalty to the lie, the very symbol of the system designed to control your mind and keep you in your place.Of course, the pesky little detail of historical evidence, you know, that the Jesus God dude probably actually existed, even if he wasn't exactly walking on water, but on some cleverly positioned rocks in the shallows, throws a wrench in this beautifully cynical theory.But hey, who needs fucking facts when you've got a good, blasphemous rant going? Now if you'll excuse me, I need a stiff drink and a good scrubbing to wash off the rampant cynicism.Cheers, you godless heathens. And wash that shit off your forehead. You look ridiculous. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

Alright, let's get this shit straight. You want to talk about the grand, holy crusade of the Republican party? The "pro-life" party? Give me a god damned break.They are so incredibly, hypocritically "pro-life." But let's be real, the second that fetus takes its first breath, they don't give a flying fuck. Their concern has a nine-month expiration date.What about the lives of the mothers and fathers, now saddled with a child they couldn't afford? What about the abused kids, born to parents who never wanted them? What about the orphans? The kids choking the foster care system? The poor?Hello Pro-Lifers? Are you there? Nope. Fucking crickets. Absolute goddamn silence.Let's call this what it is: a goddamn power trip. All they give a single shit about is having control over female bodies they don't own, fetuses they didn't help create, and children they will absolutely, positively ignore once they're born into the world they supposedly cherish.It begs the question, and I'm asking it seriously: why in the ever-loving fuck should a clump of cells have more rights than a living, breathing, thinking, and VOTING human being?For nearly 50 years, we had a semblance of sanity. Remember Roe v. Wade? Back in 1973, the Supreme Court figured out that, yes, the Constitution protects a woman's freedom to choose to have an abortion without the government crawling up her ass.Some woman named Norma McCorvey, known anonymously as "Jane Roe," had the audacity to challenge a Texas law that criminalized abortion. Bottom line? The court actually sided with her. They recognized her right to privacy. It was a landmark moment that legalized abortion and sparked a debate that, clearly, the absolute worst motherfuckers on earth have now won.Because in June 2022, the new and "improved" Trump-stacked Supreme Court decided to just... torch the whole goddamn thing. In the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case, they yanked that constitutional right out from under us. The case was brought by the last abortion clinic in all of Mississippi, the "Pink House," which was trying to fight a ban on abortions after 15 weeks. They were defending the precedent set by Roe, and for their trouble, the Court decided to burn the whole thing down.Now, your right to bodily autonomy is entirely dependent on your zip code. Fucking progress, am I right?.So what's the radical right's REAL deal?These asexual bitches will spew some bullshit about their deep moral and religious beliefs. They believe life begins at conception, and a fetus has the same rights as you or me. Their husbands just nod in agreement because they don't want to fuck up the obligatory once-a-year birthday sex.Frankly, I believe there is no greater sin than to bring an unwanted child into this shitty, unforgiving world. They think I am the one who’s nuts.But don't let their bullshit excuses fool you. You want to know the real reason they want to ban abortion? It’s not about God or families or demographics.It's about serving the oligarchy.Think about it. Who benefits from a desperate, struggling populace?You get more poorly educated masses who are easier to fucking control, people who will blindly vote for whatever celebrity or strongman you prop up in front of them.You get a permanent underclass, desperate for work, to do all the shitty jobs wealthy people don't want to do and aren't quite ready to hand over to a robot.And best of all, the real fucking kicker: you get a steady supply of bodies to fill their private prisons, fight their bullshit wars, and pay the taxes that fund the government contracts that make their rich families even richer.It's a goddamn scam. A cruel, cynical, motherfucking scam. By taking away legal abortion, they're not just taking away a choice. They're taking away women's health, their safety, their shot at an education or a career, and their economic freedom. They are actively making society a shittier, more miserable place, and they are doing it on fucking purpose.So if your stupid “pro life” bumper sticker or license plate gets Sharpied out, fuck you and the umbilical cord you rode in in. Know that we’re on to your bullshit scam. You don’t give a shit about women or children. You’re a selfish, hypocritical asshole who full deserves the eternal hell you’re going to when you die. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

You’ve heard the line a million times, probably from a high school history teacher trying to sound profound: “History is written by the victors.” Many love to attribute this zinger to Winston Churchill. Cute. Except, Churchill likely never said it. The sentiment is ancient, but this specific wording is a historical mess.There are earlier versions, like a French one from 1842 that translates to, “History is right perhaps, but let us not forget, it was written by the victors.” The point is, history isn’t a perfect record of what happened; it’s a story. And the people who win the wars, the elections, and the cultural battles get to choose which version of that story gets told. It’s a narrative shaped by agendas and prejudices to serve the interests of the powerful.Still not convinced? Let's look at a few examples.The Great American WhitewashLet's talk about America's favorite lost sailor, Christopher Columbus. The man has a national holiday, for god sakes. Yet, the whitewashed hero of your childhood textbooks never actually set foot on the shores of North America. On October 12, 1492, this douchebag bumped into the Bahamas. He later explored the coasts of modern-day Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, but he never planted a Spanish flag in what would become the United States. He was so geographically challenged he died believing he found a shortcut to Asia.When he arrived, Columbus and his crew were met by the indigenous Taino people. The Tainos, in Columbus’s own words, were friendly and generous, trading everything they had. Columbus also noted in his diary how handsome and well-built they were, immediately followed by the chilling observation, "They should be good servants."What followed was a shitshow that we’d call “terrorism” today. Those friendly natives were forced into slavery, primarily to mine for gold. If they failed to meet their quotas, they were punished by having their hands cut off. Between the slavery, the torture, and the European diseases that ravaged the population, the Taino were virtually annihilated within a few decades.Oh, and the first European to actually reach North America? That was likely Norse explorer Leif Eriksson, who landed in Canada almost 500 years before Columbus was even born. So, instead, America celebrates the moron who got lost, brutalized the locals, and "discovered" nothing. Makes perfect sense.The Founding Father with a Dark SecretAh, George Washington. The cherry-tree-chopping "Father of our Country." Let's take a peek at his actual resume, shall we? He inherited his first 10 enslaved people at age 11. By the time of his death in 1799, his Mount Vernon estate was a forced-labor camp for 316 human beings. While 123 were legally his, the others came with his marriage to Martha.To his credit, Washington was the only slave-owning founding father who became president to arrange for the emancipation of his slaves. But, that was much later, in his will. A noble gesture? Naw, it too was a douche move. It cost him absolutely nothing and only took effect after he and his wife were dead, meaning the people who served this fuckface his entire life died in bondage.Militarily, he was a loser. George lost more battles than he won. His real genius was in running away to keep the Continental Army from completely imploding. The French army saved our asses, but that’s a whole other story.But his record isn't just about losing to the British. In 1779, frustrated by Iroquois nations siding with the enemy, Washington ordered the Sullivan Expedition. This campaign was designed to inflict "the total destruction and devastation of their settlements." American forces torched more than 40 villages, destroying homes and winter food supplies, making no distinction between allies and foes. It was a brutal campaign of collective punishment aimed at crippling an entire people.That American pride is really glowing now, ain’t it?Republics, Democracies, and Other LiesFast forward to today. Here’s a fun party trick to annoy your friends: The United States isn't a democracy. It’s a republic.Don't believe me? Say the Pledge of Allegiance. "And to the Republic for which it stands..."What's the difference?* A pure democracy is essentially two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. The majority rules, and the minority has no protection.* A republic is governed by elected representatives and the rule of law. A constitution, in theory, is supposed to protect the inalienable rights of everyone, including the sick, poor, weak, and any other minorities. In theory, a republic gives the sheep a shock collar to place on the wolves to defend itself if necessary.So yes, the U.S. is more accurately called a constitutional federal republic. It has democratic elements, but it's definitely not a democracy.But let's be real. Who gets to really participate in this grand republic? Can someone from the middle class or a poor background really run for high office?With campaigns costing hundreds of millions of dollars, this has become a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich. It’s a fucking auction, not an election. In 2023 alone, special interests and their lobbyists spent a record $4.29 billion to "influence" Congress. Your single vote is up against billions in cash.Guess who wins? The people's votes have become little more than a decoration. Americans should be proud that they’ve completely legitimized political bribery.And then there’s the Electoral College, which is supposed to protect us against shit like this. But the electors are APPOINTED. And guess who gets to appoint them?If You Repeat a Lie...How could they pull this shit off? How do they sell us a sanitized, feel-good version of history and politics? The answer is as simple as history books themselves: propaganda.“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind... It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”This is a well-known paraphrase from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. The strategy is simple: keep the message short, dumb it down, and repeat it endlessly.And that brings us to another famous quote:“If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.”Everyone pins this one on Hitler, but it's more accurately a summary of the philosophy of his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. It’s deeply ironic that a quote about repeating lies is itself a misattribution that has been repeated into "truth."So, yes, history is a scam. It's a curated script, a highlight reel edited by those in power. The real story—the one that's messy, uncomfortable, and far more interesting—is usually buried in the footnotes. It's your job to go digging.But good luck. You’re fixin to need an excavator to dig through all that shit. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

It feels like a slap in the face to all the amazing American actors out there who are struggling to find work.I've got a bone to pick, and it's a biggun. You want to talk about the American obsession with anyone who isn't American? It's not a conspiracy theory; it's a fact. It's like casting agents have a secret bingo card, and the first square to fill is "Not a born and bred American."My friend is an aspiring actress. She acted as the lead in an indie film we worked on a few years ago. Her performance gave me chills. She has done local theater performances and won several awards. She’s young but convincing, Methodic. Super talented. And definitely easy on the eyes. Her parents hired her an agent out of Atlanta who has worked with some pretty heavy duty talent. Still, nothing. Understandably. she is incredibly frustrated. All she can find is local television commercial work. She’s about ready to hang up her heels. I can’t count how many of our favorite "American" characters are played by people from somewhere else. Hugh Laurie as Dr. House. Christian Bale as Batman. And let's not forget Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes in The Walking Dead. What the fuck? He's a fucking Brit! My buddy and I were watching this show on Netflix called Animal Kingdom. It’s kinda like a Breaking Bad meets the Sopranos meets 90210. A southern California family raised by a severely tweaked mom embarks on a series of twisted criminal escapades. I began to notice that two, then three, then four of their principal actors spoke a little strangely at times. Bingo. Four of those SoCal peeps were from overseas. That’s literally half the cast of this supposedly American drama. And don't even get me started on the Aussies. Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett, Margot Robbie, Chris Hemsworth... stealing roles that could have been amazingly performed by American talent. What the fuck? The list goes on. These motherfuckers are everywhere. Foreigners playing AMERICAN characters. It feels like a slap in the face to all the amazing American actors out there. Many who are broke and working gig economy jobs to get by. Many who constantly struggle to find work. Some who are ready to completely give up. It's technically not a crime to impersonate an American, but it damn sure feels like it ought to be. It's like we're saying American talent just isn't good enough, and we need to bring in someone from across the pond or down under to make a movie or show a success.I get it; the actors chosen for these parts are truly talented. But come on, are we really saying there are no American actors who can do the job? Considering the U.S. population is five times bigger than the UK's, for crying out loud, statistically there should be a huge pool of talent to choose from. Are we really that short on good actors that we have to keep importing them? And don't give me that bullshit about "rigorous training." We have Juilliard and Columbia and NYU and a zillion other amazing drama schools. Look, casting fuckfaces, American actors can act, too. We need to fix this shit. Like, now. Brits like Damian Lewis in "Homeland," Tom Hardy in "The Dark Knight Rises," Henry Cavill as Superman, Idris Elba in like, everything, Emily Blunt in "The Devil Wears Prada," and Kate Winslet in "Mare of Easttown."Irish actors like Colin Farrell in "Minority Report" and Liam Neeson in "Taken."Aussies like Hugh Jackman, Cate Blanchett, Naomi Watts, and Margot Robbie—who, by the way, was in The Wolf of Wall Street and Suicide Squad playing what? Fuckin’ Americans. And the biggest offender of all, that Nicole Kidman, who has played an American character in "Big Little Lies," and literally about 70 other goddamn roles where she plays American characters. Seventy fucking acting jobs that could have totally enriched multiple American actress’s careers. Don’t forget the other foreign sons of bitches playing Americans: Christoph Waltz, who is Austrian, in "Inglourious Basterds." Or Mads Mikkelsen, he’s a fucking Dane, in "Hannibal," and Diane Kruger, a kraut, in "National Treasure."So, why do they keep doing this shit? Obviously, it's not because American actors can't do the job. My theory is that it's all about those EDM dance parties where casting idiots get a little crazy on ‘shrooms and decide to ignore all the American auditions and hire Brits and Aussies instead. Or maybe it's just that non-Americans have a certain "X factor" that Americans apparently don't possess. That’s a kick in the ballsack. I guess we Muricans all just a bunch of low-talent dinguses. And don't even get me started on the fake "American" accent they all do—it's like a ratchet parrot with a speech impediment.This isn't just about accents and "rigorous training" anymore. This is a matter of national security... for our entertainment industry. It's time to stop the madness. We have a perfectly good government agency for this: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE for short. While they're securing our borders, maybe they could swing by a few Hollywood studio lots and check some goddamn paperwork.I'm picturing it now: a team of ICE agents storming a set, politely asking for visas. "Oh, you're here on an O-1 visa for extraordinary ability? That's nice. But can you name five American actors who could've played that part just as well? No? Well, pack your bags, mate." Quick, cue the sound of gunfire! Sounds like the next Netflix series. Sadly they’re probably cast all Australians to play the American roles. It's not about being un-American; it's about being PRO-American. It's about giving our own people good ol’ AMERICAN people a shot for a change. So, to all the casting agents out there, let's make a deal. Hire an American, or we'll send a very polite letter to ICE with your address on it. This is a dramatization... for now. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com

Let's cut through the shit and get to the real story behind America's "engineering shortage." The problem isn't only that our education system is a complete fucking failure; it's that we've fine-tuned it to produce exactly the kind of workforce billionaires wanted. We've got a pipeline that’s less of a talent conduit and more of leaking fire hose.The Glorified Daycare: Education by Standardized TestOur K-12 system, the supposed bedrock of a technical society, is less a foundation and more of a shitshow. We have kids who go to extracurricular classes to learn how to ace a standardized test on particle physics but couldn't tell you the first thing about a wrench. We've managed to turn science and math into a joyless exercise in memorization, sapping all the creativity and curiosity out of learning.The real goal isn't to create thinkers, it's to create test-takers, and we're succeeding wildly at it. Why would a bright-eyed kid want to spend their life solving complex, messy problems when they've been trained their whole life to fill in bubbles?The College Conundrum: A Degree in DebtFor the brave few who make it through high school with their curiosity intact, the next challenge is an engineering degree. It's a grueling, expensive marathon, and the sad truth is that a significant number of graduates emerge from it with a shiny new piece of paper and a mountain of debt, but not the practical skills that companies claim to need.While our post-grad programs are sought after worldwide, our basic universities are fabulous at teaching theory but fall short on the hands-on, real-world application. It's a place where you'll learn all the formulas you could ever want but might not learn how to use any relevant industry software. By the time you've finally graduated and are ready to apply for a job, you're a walking, talking theory book in a world that needs a practical Swiss Army knife.But HR departments are trained to deal with this. College was nothing but a four year keg party and a psy-ops test in compliance. They know damn well a tenth grader could do the job you applied for. They know you know nothing, and you’ll learn everything you need to know on the job.The Corporate Catch-22: The Race to the BottomAnd this brings us to the real punchline: the corporate world. The very same companies that loudly lament the "talent shortage" are often the ones actively creating it. They claim they can't find qualified American workers, but what they really mean is they can't find qualified American workers willing to work for peanuts.The H-1B visa program, which is sold as a tool to bring in the world's "best and brightest," is routinely used to bring in foreign engineers at a fraction of the cost. The Department of Labor's "prevailing wage" is a joke, a laughably low bar that allows companies to pay foreign workers significantly less than their American counterparts for the exact same job. It's a beautiful, self-serving system. Corporations don't have to invest in training the domestic workforce because they can just import cheap labor.This depresses wages and makes engineering a less attractive career path for bright American students. As a result, the number of qualified domestic engineers stagnates, which then gives companies even more reason to claim a "shortage" and demand more visas.It's a self-perpetuating cycle of corporate greed and strategic underinvestment.So, when you hear a billionaire complain that America "doesn't have enough qualified engineers," just remember what they're really saying: "We've created a system that makes it more profitable to import talent than to develop our own, and now we're complaining about the perfectly predictable result." It's not a failure of our education system alone; it's a failure of corporate responsibility and a national commitment to our own workforce.Our federal government is supposed to recognize scams like this and protect us. But there’s something peculiar about our current government. Do you know what it is? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit misongrey.substack.com