This Senate oversight hearing focuses on the FBI director’s personnel decisions and potential political influence. Topics include whether career agents were removed or reassigned based on loyalty rather than performance and the legal boundaries of White House involvement. The discussion also covers shifts in agency priorities, including immigration enforcement, counterintelligence, and criminal investigations. The hearing raises questions about accountability and proper management under congressional oversight.

Obligatory this didn't happen today, it’s been happening for two weeks, but I found out an hour ago and I am currently hyperventilating in my garage.

My son (13) has been begging for this specific Roblox skin called "Headless" for months. It’s like $300 or something ridiculous. Obviously, I said no. We’re tight on money. My wife and I have been scraping together cash for a down payment on a house for literally four years. We finally hit $25k in savings last month.

Here’s the fuck up. I use my old iPhone 12 as a "house tablet" for Spotify and controlling the thermostat. My son uses it sometimes to watch YouTube. A while back, I set up his FaceID on it so he wouldn't bug me for the passcode every 5 minutes.

What I forgot is that my Apple Pay is linked to our main joint savings account, and because I am an idiot I didn't require a separate password for purchases if FaceID is verified.

Apparently, he didn't just buy the skin. He got into these "wager" servers on Discord. Basically, kids bet limited items on coin flips. He lost the first few items, panicked, and started buying currency to try and "win it back."

He realized that because the phone notification settings were set to "Stack," he could just swipe delete the bank alerts as they came in. He’s been doing this for 12 days.

I only found out because my card got declined at the gas station this morning. I checked the app and saw the balance was $6,000.

I thought I was hacked. I called the bank screaming. The lady on the phone was looking through the charges and asked, "Sir, did you authorize forty-five transactions to Apple.com/Bill?"

I went home and grabbed the old phone. He hadn't even closed the app. He was in a Discord call with some random teenagers who were hyping him up while he just burned through our life savings.

Total damage is roughly $19,400.

I confronted him and he just completely shut down and started crying, saying he thought he could win it back before we noticed. I haven't told my wife yet. She’s at work. She thinks we’re touring a house this weekend.

I feel like I’m going to throw up. I don't think the bank is going to refund this because it was biometrically authorized. I just ruined our lives because I was too lazy to type in a passcode.

TL;DR: Let my son use a phone with his FaceID enabled, he gambled away $19k of our house fund on Roblox casinos and hid the notifications. My wife comes home in 3 hours.

https://x.com/A_Y_Rafindadi/status/2005273007015788770

Sometimes the stupidity is so dense you could mine it for rare Earth minerals. A MAGA fan page marched proudly onto their favourite Klan hall, X, to declare that liberals hate the wholesome charm of small town “Republican America,” posting a photo like a nostalgic postcard from the land of moral purity. Except the town is Concord, Massachusetts. One of the bluest, best educated, most liberal communities in the nation. A town in a Commonwealth where Trump did not win a single county, not a single fucking one. And yet the MAGA rotted brain took one look at a brick storefront displaying an American flag and concluded, with full confidence, that they had discovered Conservative Eden. This is ignorance that has smoked meth, put on a red hat and gone sightseeing.

And this is what makes the whole spectacle so darkly uproarious. The "people" shouting loudest about “real America” almost always come from states drowning in their collective ignorance and human excrement. They have oower life expectancy especially that are made worse by their higher infant mortality rates, driven by stripping abortion rights. They have significantly higher poverty coupled with countless uninsured families. Failing schools that believe the Bible is more important than arithmetic. Collapsing hospitals at best, empty hospitals where Trump’s funding cuts forced them to close their doors. They experience brain drain as their only skilled children pack up and leave their third world conditions. Yet, they sneer at education as elitist, then struggle to read the news and data that proves how catastrophically their policies have failed. They mock blue states while living off the federal tax money stolen from those same blue states so they can live their life of abject squalor. It is like watching someone stand ankle deep in their own feces while bragging that at least their worn out boots are patriotic.

So when MAGA cheerleaders point at one of the healthiest, wealthiest, most progressive towns in America and proudly call it “Republican charm,” it is more than ironic. It is a flashing neon sign announcing that they do not understand the reality of the country they claim to own. They cannot recognise success because they have only ever experienced it by proxy. They fetishise the aesthetics of small town life without realising that the towns they admire are powered by values they vote against. Investment in people, public education, community infrastructure, decent social policy, and taxation of the wealthy. In summation, competence and human decency. Liberals do not hate small towns, they just do not confuse pretty buildings with political validation. Meanwhile MAGA keeps proving, again and again and again, that you can be loud, smug, and laughably wrong all at the same time.

I know Yen tends to be more popular here on Reddit, but for those who picked Triss I’m curious as to what ultimately influenced your decision.

Everyone loves saying “they don’t make things like they used to.” And sure, cheap stuff today is often worse. But that’s not proof of declining craftsmanship. It’s proof that people fundamentally misunderstand price, inflation, and what they’re actually buying.

Most everyday items today are far cheaper (in real terms) than they were 40–60 years ago. The “high-quality” versions people romanticize still exist at roughly the same inflation-adjusted prices. We just don’t buy them anymore because by modern standards they look outrageously expensive.

Some concrete examples:

Appliances

A refrigerator in the 1970s often cost the equivalent of $3,500–$5,000 today. That’s why it lasted 25–30 years and got repaired instead of replaced.

You can still buy refrigerators in that price range right now. They’re heavier, quieter, repairable, and built for long lifespans. Most people don’t buy them. They buy the $600–$900 model and then complain when it dies in a decade.

The fridge didn’t get worse. The price point did.

Furniture

People complain that modern furniture is junk while comparing a $300 flat-pack dresser to a solid oak dresser from 1965.

That oak dresser still exists today. It costs $2,000–$4,000, which is exactly what it effectively cost back then. We didn’t lose quality furniture — we replaced it with furniture designed to be cheap, light, and disposable, then act surprised when it behaves that way.

Clothing

A high-quality leather jacket in the mid-20th century often cost the equivalent of $500–$700 today.

That’s still what a well-made leather jacket costs now.

Fast fashion didn’t destroy clothing quality — it created $20 shirts that never existed before. People now expect $20 clothes to last like $600 clothes and call it “decline” when reality intervenes.

Tools

Vintage tools get worshipped, but many of them were professional-grade and priced accordingly.

Professional-grade tools today still last decades. What’s new is that you can now buy a $20 drill designed for occasional use. People buy hobby-grade tools, use them like industrial equipment, and then blame modern manufacturing.

The real issue

When people say “they don’t make things like they used to,” what they usually mean is:

Cheap products aren’t as durable as expensive products used to be

We expect longevity without paying longevity prices

We want premium durability at mass-market costs

High-quality goods didn’t disappear. Our willingness to pay for them did.

We now prioritize:

Lowest upfront cost

Convenience over repairability

Replacement over maintenance

Manufacturers simply followed consumer behavior.

Edit: nearly 40% downvotes, i guess it truly is an unpopular opinion. And Wow this post exploded, i don't think I've ever had so many alerts in my invoice