Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

While our circles have been going hard on Malfoid fanfiction, progressive women have been having Malfoy fantasies of their own. Let’s just say they’re weirder—so weird we can’t resist but dive deeper and pull you down this debauched rabbit hole with us.

We therefore invite you to join us today on Based Camp for a peek into the viral hit that is Alchemissed, a dark romantasy (or is it dark fantasy???) book that’s taking the female romantasy-reading world by storm and already being turned into a movie. It’s based on Manacled, a Harry Potter “dramione” fan fiction (a subset of Harry Potter fan fiction in which Draco and Hermione are paired) involving… well, let’s just say is kind of a version of Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tail with plenty of nonconsensual you-know-what forced by followers of you-know-who that packs in necromancy, cannibalism, and plenty of other forms of gore, just for good measure.

We explore the book’s enthusiastic fan response as well as the uncomfortable tension readers feel between their concept of romance and the dark realities that turn many of them on (not to mention the horror some Alchimissed readers experience upon realizing they purchased a book that was based on a Harry Potter fanfiction when, in these circles, JK Rowling = Bad Person for her status of TERF Queen).

Show Notes

Wrote E;R on X: “I’ve just learnt, while the boys are reading Malfoid rn, the girls were reading fanfic about Draco graping a mindwiped Hermione in a Handmaid’s Tale repopulation program and it was republished as a legally distinct dark romantasy called “Alchemised” that sold over a mil last year”

Truly great responses ensued.

But it’s actually worse than what ER said; here’s a Hollywood Reporter headline from September 10th: Big Deal: Legendary Pays 7 Figures for ‘Alchemised,’ Book That Began Life as ‘Harry Potter’ Fan Fiction (Exclusive)

Google Alchemissed and you’ll get the following AI overview:

“Overview and Plot

• Premise: Set in the war-torn city-state of Paladia, the story follows former alchemist and healer Helena Marino. Awakening with two missing years of memory after a lost war, she is imprisoned on a crumbling estate and sent to the High Reeve, Kaine Ferron—a powerful, ruthless necromancer and former academic rival—while navigating a brutal Repopulation Programme under the High Necromancer, Morrough.

• Length & Structure: The massive, 1,000+ page book is divided into a non-linear three-part narrative focused on trauma, memory, and systemic oppression.

Genre and Tone

• Dark Fantasy vs. Romantasy: While marketed and shelved by many readers alongside romantic fantasy due to its underlying emotional core and central relationship, the author, fans, and various critics emphasize that it is a harrowing, low-spice dark fantasy rather than a traditional romance.

• Content Warning: The novel deals with extremely dark themes, heavy psychological distress, and war trauma, carrying extensive trigger warnings.”

Reviews

Both the good AND bad reviews are entertaining

Some peeks at Goodreads, where it has 387,253 ratings and 69,345 reviews (I’m only including excerpts from much longer reviews)

Some choice quotes from fan reviews:

* Ana writes: “♾️ nothing will ever compare…”

* Marianna Moore writes: “Infinity stars. Nobody talk to me for like 8-10 business months. I’m in severe emotional pain. Without out a doubt one of the best books I’ve ever read. God tier. Perfection. Nothing will ever compare but my god did it HURT. I have so many thoughts I cannot put into words right now.”

* I found the trigger warnings from Angie’s five-star review (with 7,921 followers) to be particularly amusing: “Trigger Warnings: wartime violence, religious abuse, depictions of complex trauma, suicidal ideation, self-harm, PTSD, medical torture, eugenics, cannibalism, s3xual assault, r4pe, and allusion to necrophilia.”

Negative Reviews

The top complaints are

(1) bad writing,

(2) how dare you do anything related to Harry Potter written by Bad Woman JK Rowling and

(3) being angry that trigger-warning-inducing subjects are actually a feature and not a bug in this incredibly popular romance novel.

Even fans of the book admit the writing is bad.

* In her four-star review, Emily May writes: “I have a lot of thoughts about this, the first being: for goodness sake, get an editor in here. Nothing needs to be this long. The second thought being: damn it, though, this was pretty good.”

Writes Em: “DNF: This has the most egregious grammatical errors I have ever seen in a Del Ray, Random House published book. The prose structure is shockingly poor.”

Writes emma: “read this in the same way nellie bly admitted herself to the asylum.”

It’s a long review, but she later continues with:

“i don’t read dark romance. i don’t like romantasy. i am a harry potter hater and when the protagonist in the book FANGIRL defends her right to submit knockoff hogwarts fanfiction to a TEACHER in a CLASS it makes me cringe so hard it could convert coal into diamonds.

this is possibly the final boss of my reading career.

this book has EVERYTHING, and by everything i mean every trigger warning. off the top of my head: violence, torture, sexual assault, necrophilia, execution, kidnapping, abuse, death, suicidal ideation, roofies, self-harm, forced pregnancy, war, racism, cannibalism, misogyny.

it throws every edgy and dark subject a hot topic-shopping seventh grader could think of at you in the hopes you won’t notice it’s strung together with info dumps, cardboard cutout characters, and a dream.

it moves from one violent seizure to the next physical attack to the next kys attempt at breakneck speed, so maybe you won’t figure out that even a copyeditor couldn’t make it through this book.

or i guess we might have needed to read about helena being covered in dried blood every other page for three straight chapters.”

Writes Noelia: “I was today years old when I found out that this was actually the trad-published version of a very popular Dramione fanfiction (apparently, Dramione fics have become a thing since my long-gone days as a hardcore Potterhead of the first dawn).

But I was even more today years old when I learned about its controversies, mainly due to the presence of sexual assault scenes and its very problematic takes about it (I’ll come back to this later on, I promise).”

She proceeds to write:

“I wasn’t aware back then that I was setting myself up for the most traumatizing, discomforting and twisted story I’ve ever experienced as a reader.

But also, and without a question, one of the poorest written and edited ones, making it the worst book I’ve read in my life, by MILES.”

Sreegita: “EDIT : AS A SA VICTIM MYSELF, CAN Y’ALL PLS GET OFF MY ASS?

how beautiful to see a fic where draco r@pes hermione is getting trad published meanwhile everyday actually talented bipoc and qpoc authors are struggling to get even a deal

loveeeee to see r@pe fantasy books dominating the romance space!!!”

Fan Response

The fan response is unbelievable. You could scroll for ages on Tiktok going through it.

There’s AI-generated fan art:

Plus the reactions are top tier:

Heated Debate

Genre Quibbles

Woman on Tiktok insists it’s a high-fantasy book focused on power, oppression, and women’s bodily autonomy. (2076 likes)

I think the irony in this is that the subjects of power, oppression, and bodily autonomy are both super non-romantic AND major turn-ons for women.

Why is Alchemised not a romantasy? : r/fantasyromance

“I already had a hard time figuring out the difference between fantasy romance and romantasy but I think I got there.

But now I’m hearing Alchemised is not a romance? It’s not romantasy? I’m just so confused.

Now I’m over here reading that romance has to have a happy ending. The guy has to be nice?? Said who???? I would like to speak to the manager of romance about this please, who do I take my complaint to?”

Top Responses:

* “I just commented on another thread about this but I feel like there’s lots of fantasy that has romance that you’d never call a romantasy, like game of thrones or lo…

We examine the origins of Halloween traditions and show that none trace back to pagan practices. From trick-or-treating evolving out of pre-holiday door-to-door visits and caroling-style customs, to jack-o’-lanterns starting as practical turnip lanterns, every element developed within Christian communities.

The video covers the history of All Saints Day, the role of Scottish and Irish folk customs, the commercialization through postcards and party goods in the early 1900s, and why modern associations with ghosts and the occult appeared centuries later. It also addresses common claims about Samhain and explains how the date and practices remained distinct from any earlier pagan observances.

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins:Hello,

Malcolm Collins:Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be busting the myth that the modern practice of Halloween has any meaningful pagan roots at all.

Simone Collins:But I don’t know the the the pumpkins and the gourds and the lights and the the... You gotta scare away that?

Malcolm Collins:Nothing traces back to anything pagan, and we will go through each thing with receipts. And it is going to shock, I think, a lot of people who have bought into this myth because it is a persistent myth, and it feels cool. Like, oh, I bet the pagans did something around that time,

Speaker 4:My life has been a lie. God is dead. The government’s lame. Thanksgiving is about killing Indians. Jesus wasn’t born on Christmas. They moved the date. It was a pagan holiday.

Simone Collins:and they’re in like, don’t Christian families say, well, we don’t celebrate Halloween because that’s a demonic holiday, etcetera.

Malcolm Collins:They also say that about Christmas, and they say that about a a lot of things. So, it’s actually really fascinating as you get into it, where the various Halloween traditions come from. so for example, can you guess, the practice of trick or treating Is actually an evolution of another practice that was just something you did before any holiday, and there is another

Simone Collins:evolution of

Malcolm Collins:What? Okay. And what what was it? Describe it.

Simone Collins:You, you get kinda drunk and you go from house to house and you ask for more, like, food and drink.

Malcolm Collins:Okay. So you’re familiar with it. Yeah. So what would... Did there... The, the the practice that today we know is trick or treating is actually the exact same practice that we today know as caroling just evolved in two different directions, both practiced before two important Christian holidays.

Simone Collins:Oh. Just, like, raid people’s house. It it just seems it seems like a very disturbing thing to have happened. Like, oh gosh.

Malcolm Collins:They’re gonna So so what Simone’s... Oh, well, specifically, the iteration that you’re familiar with, the more aggressive one, is not a general British tradition. It came from the the... You can guess who, the backwards people, the lower Scottish reavers. In in in the in the normal version of this tradition, what you would do is before All Hallows’ Eve or All Saints Day, you would go door to door, and you would say, if you give me a treat, I will pray for your dead people. Oh. Right. I’ll I’ll pray for dead people in your family. A very Christian tradition, by the way. This is like a a thoroughly Christian tradition. But then the the backwards people who ended up becoming one of the dominant cultural groups in The United States that now form the the core of what we call Americana, they had a separate tradition where they would go and basically come to your house and be like, give us something or we’ll f up your property. And you see this captured in the, even even some traditional carols. Like, give us some figgy pudding. We won’t go until we get some.

Simone Collins:Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:so bring it right here. It’s it’s quite a forceful song if you if you listen to the lyrics.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Yeah. It’s basically, yeah, give us, food and drink or you’re gonna regret it.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Give us food and drink or you’re gonna regret it, which is exactly what the initial version of what we today think of as trick or treating was. and the other the other fun part of it is its association with ghosts and goblins and everything like that. That was created from the nineteen hundreds to, like, nineteen twenties primarily by, holiday card companies. And so you’d say, well, how did... Wait. Why were holiday card companies... Why did they associate those things with the holiday in the first place? Yeah. and there were two reasons. reason number one is... So if we look at the early Christian iteration of this holiday, you can see because it doesn’t begin to look more and more like a ghost and ghouls and go out and dress up day until very, very, very modern iterations of it. and and those iterations bear some resemblance to stuff that was practiced around this period, hundreds of years before the first Halloween was. The problem is is that the first Halloween didn’t include all of those elements that looked vaguely pagan. And because of that, you you can’t draw a connection between the pagan tradition and the first Halloween. But you could say, okay. Well, so how did it how did it get associated with the dead to begin with? Right. So it was originally a holiday for all saints. This is where it got the name All Saints Day.

Simone Collins:Wait. Hold on, though. No. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t be the Catholic church and say, okay. Let’s just celebrate all the saints on one... Like, present’s day, and then be like, but then we also need a holiday for all the best saints.

Malcolm Collins:Well... So it changed over time. But what is also have a president’s day. Come on. It was like the president’s day of saints because many saints didn’t have individual holidays.

Simone Collins:Oh, so it was for all the other... It’s all other saints.

Malcolm Collins:Well, including those saints. But then it evolved, and it became for all martyrs.

Simone Collins:And then Oh, is that where some of the spookiness comes in?

Malcolm Collins:For... No. It was for everyone who had martyred themselves on behalf of the church. Then much, much, much later, it became the holiday for all Christian dead people. Okay. Because they they basically... It was just sort of a cultural phenomenon that you can see. You sort of loosen it. Well, can we pray for this person to this day? Sure. Yeah. Why not?

Simone Collins:Have a blast.

Malcolm Collins:Looser and looser and looser and became a holiday for all dead people. and that’s where it got the death connection. But that death connection comes directly downstream of saints and then martyrs, which are very, very, very Christian ideas. Then you have the, well, then what about... What... Where did it get this occult connection? Where did it get this magic mysticism connection? This is actually one of its oldest traditions, still only dating to around the eighteen hundreds.

Simone Collins:What?

Malcolm Collins:But as a tradition, so long after anyone remembered anything pagan, it was actually, again, from the reavers or the Scottish people that this tradition was entered. And it was based around a number of ceremonies, I guess you could say, that people did as part of courtship rituals.

Simone Collins:Wait. Wait. It’s not a courtship holiday. This is not a courtship holiday.

Malcolm Collins:It actually had nothing to do with the holiday at all. The only reason the two became associated is because Halloween, given its time of year, it already was a holiday where people were doing, like, pranks and stuff like this, and you’d you’d have a a party. so it was a perfect time for young, rural, backwood Scottish people to do their courtship rituals. And that’s how the two became connected. They they weren’t, like, intrinsically linked at all. It was just a very convenient day to do this type of thing. Think of it like this. Like, a a hoe dance or something like this, which is like a tradi…

Today on Based Camp we discuss the shock people experienced when the Economist (of all outlets!) published data from UK Ministry of Justice records showing Afghan nationals to be convicted of sexual offenses at roughly seven times the rate of British nationals, with Middle East and North Africa groups at 3.6 times and Sub-Saharan Africa at 2.5 times. We examine the original and revised charts, similar patterns in Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands, and the legal risks of discussing such statistics in the UK.

We also discuss how the Economist’s team handled population adjustments for age and sex, comparisons to raw conviction counts, reactions from online analysts, and what the data suggests about migration impacts across Europe, noting shifts in public discourse and political positions on immigration controls.

It’s rather amusing that the Economist decided to step in this arena at all. Is the Overton Window shifting? Let us know what you think in the comments!

Show Notes

Given that people in the UK are sent to jail for inciting racial hatred*, the internet is now truly shocked by a chart that The Economist used Ministry of Justice data standardised for age and sex to show Afghan nationals at roughly 7x the British conviction rate for sexual offenses, Middle East and North Africa at ~3.6x and sub-Saharan Africa at ~2.5x, with EU and East Asian groups below baseline

“I’m shocked that The Economist was willing to publish this!” wrote Cremieux

Andris K Berzins noted that “The Economist article this chart comes from (https://economist.com/britain/2026/10/25/do-immigrants-from-some-countries-commit-more-sex-crimes) tries to play down the discrepancy. But the data (shown on a linear rather than log scale as in the original article) is alarming indeed. The Economist’s conclusion, that in absolute terms the difference in sex crimes is not alarming, hides the fact that migration is a real issue and there is a clear impact. 🤷‍♂️”

The original original article makes it look more stark.

GuruAnaerobic showed the data in a different way; doesn’t look good with Alex commenting that ““British Nationals” is doing some heavy work on its own already”

Brian Chau swung in to correct the scale though African Farmer noted he “Should have used dicks instead of fatties.” (I am inclined to agree but Brian keeps it classy)

*For real:

* Lucy Connolly received a 31-month prison sentence in October 2024 after pleading guilty to inciting racial hatred. Her post called for mass deportation and said, “set fire to all the f*****g hotels full of the b******s for all I care.” This was not a conviction simply for saying that immigration creates crime concerns.

* Tyler Kay received a 38-month sentence in August 2024 for an X post repeating that call to burn hotels housing asylum seekers. The judge’s published sentencing remarks reproduce the post and identify the offence as publishing material that stirred up racial hatred. He did not need to participate in a physical attack to be imprisoned for the publication itself.

This went viral, so some riffed on this. Maarten van den Berg looked at stats for Denmark, Norway, and The Netherlands.

The Article

Do immigrants from some countries commit more sex crimes?

“In Bristol last November three men and a 17-year-old boy, all Afghans, gang-raped a 17-year-old girl over several hours. Beforehand they had groomed her on Snapchat and plied her with alcohol; afterwards they fled to France in a lorry. The French authorities returned them to Britain, where they were convicted and, on October 6th, sentenced to long jail terms. In court the girl described how “listening to it all again from the lawyers kept me reliving everything that happened to me”.

Such horrors fuel suspicion of migrants. So did a recent state-issued booklet about Britain for asylum-seekers. Page five clarified that the legal age of consent is 16 and that rape is a serious crime. “I’ve never heard of someone who decided not to rape because they received a leaflet,” said Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader. The clumsy campaign fed the idea that some immigrants—notably men seeking asylum—are responsible for a disproportionate share of sex offences. Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, claims that “Afghans are over TWENTY times more likely to commit sex crimes than Brits.”

Is that true? The government does not publish crime rates by immigration status. The limited data it does release are raw counts of offences by those of each nationality, from a country-wide police database. The “20 times” claim was based on there being 13,000 Afghans in Britain, an estimate from the Office for National Statistics’ Annual Population Survey. That figure is unreliable, however, having been extrapolated from a sample of fewer than 60 individuals. In 2021 the ONS stopped publishing this population estimate owing to plummeting survey-response rates.

The Economist’s analysis suggests that the “20 times” claim is a wild exaggeration. But our numbers are hardly reassuring.

The Migration Observatory, a think-tank based at Oxford University, obtained figures through freedom-of-information requests to the Ministry of Justice. These count cautions and convictions in England and Wales, split by offenders’ nationality, between 2010 and 2024. The data detail 8m crimes, of which 106,000 are sex offences ranging from rape to consensual sex in public. The police’s recording of offenders’ nationality is messy, but we found that four-fifths of sex crimes were committed by British people. Just 0.39%—409 offences over the 15-year period—were committed by people who said they were Afghan.

Whether 409 crimes is a lot or a little depends on how many Afghans are in the country. In March 2021 the last census reported 14,300 Afghan passport-holders living in England and Wales, and another 7,100 without a passport who said they were Afghan: a total population of 21,400.

The census is just a snapshot in time. Since 2021 some 3m people have settled in Britain and the foreign-born population has risen from 16% to 19% of the total. After the Taliban seized Kabul, in August 2021, some 38,000 Afghans flocked to Britain over the following year and a half. Accounting for those who later left and those who became citizens, we estimate that the Afghan population of England and Wales had doubled to 45,000 by the end of 2022.

To capture more than the snapshot we analysed convictions during a three-year period, 2020-22, and averaged our population estimate over those three years. We then standardised our estimate to account for age and sex (men commit 98% of sex crimes, for example, and Afghans are about ten years younger than the population at large). This suggested Afghans are convicted of sex crimes at seven times the British rate—a far cry from Mr Timothy’s “over 20 times”, but disturbing nevertheless (see chart). Our number is still uncertain: it may be skewed by a few serial offenders, by quirks in reporting and detection rates for such crimes.

Evidence from other countries, using different methods, suggests that this may not be solely a British problem. The perception is certainly not. “The main group, of the worst crimes, like raping, like killing people…the main category are Syrians and Afghans,” Alice Weidel, leader of Germany’s populist Alternative for Germany party, told The Economist. In Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany and Sweden immigrants from the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa are over-represented among suspects and convicts—especially for sex crimes. Where age-standardised analysis exists for those countries, the over-representation shrinks, as in Britain, but it does not vanish.

Looking at convictions by ethnicity, rather than nationality, is more reassuring. The Ministry of Justice produces detailed data on prosecutions and convictions by age, sex and ethnicity. We used these to repeat our age-standardised analysis, for the same 2020-22 window. We find that men of Pakistani ethnicity, as well as other Asian and …

Join us today for a deep dive into China’s growing trend of pretend-to-work offices where unemployed people pay daily fees to sit in cubicles, maintain routines, and keep up appearances for family and resumes. The phenomenon started with a 2024 comedy skit and has expanded into real businesses across major cities offering strict schedules, fake clients, and even free lunch.

We examine the cultural drivers including family pressure, the curse of 35 in hiring, and the desire to avoid visible unemployment gaps. Real user stories reveal how these spaces help with job transitions, skill building, and social face-saving while contrasting sharply with American coworking spaces focused on actual productivity.

The episode also features dubbed clips from the original viral skit and explores whether similar services could emerge in the post-AI job market. We’re personally quite pleased with the dubbing system Malcolm vibecoded for Rfab.ai—if you want to try it out, you can do so here!

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins:Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be diving into the phenomenon of a new type of business in China Oh. Where people pay to pretend like they’re working under a fake boss that gives them fake jobs. And this came from a China fact chasers video. love those guys. I’ve been a fan of them forever. So they did a video on this one girl who was talking about how every day she goes out, she takes the train, she pretends to work, and, you know, she stops all these ways she does it cheaply. And it’s her family, and they’re like, this is an increasing phenomenon in China. So I saw that video, and I was like, I want to know more. So I take it to AI, and the AI says, actually, the trend has advanced significantly beyond what they’re reporting in that video, and there are now centers in multiple major Chinese cities that are fake workstations. And what’s cool that I will be able to bring you guys that no one else can is dubbed a video of the advertisements for these places and the comedy sketch that kicked it off because rfab.ai’s API and website both offer dubbing. And so you get to see some of our dubbing work. I I don’t even think the, China Fact Chaser guys could do that. So... Or they could if they use our facts. I’d like... I’d give them free credits if anybody knows them.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Would help talk with them.

Malcolm Collins:But, the idea actually originally came from a Chinese variety show in December 2024. In the skit, somebody visits a fictional pretend to work company where people pay a fee to sit in an office, slack off, and maintain the appearance of employment so they can more easily transition into a real job later.

Simone Collins:Oh, wait. So it’s like a resume stuffer?

Malcolm Collins:we’ll get to why they do it. There’s actually a complicated number of reasons why they do it. Okay. but here is the video.

Speaker 3:Everyone here is just pretending

Speaker 4:So a bunch of unemployed people playing house at your place.

Speaker 3:Other than not paying salaries, our company is identical to any regular company.

Speaker 4:Like, what’s the point of writing this?

Speaker 5:Only your regular job has so much meaning.

Speaker 4:Alright. I excuse me. You guys want an office system installed. Right?

Speaker 3:Yes. Our company wants to install an o a system.

Speaker 4:No problem. So what exactly does your company...

Speaker 3:We’re Pretending to Work LLC.

Speaker 4:Pretending?

Speaker 3:A virtual company. Everyone who comes here pretends to work each day. On one hand, you keep it from your family. On the other, you stay in work mode, bridge the resume gap. So when a new job pops up, it’s a seamless transition. You catch my drift?

Speaker 4:Got it. So it’s just a bunch of unemployed people playing house here.

Speaker 3:Our management system is exceptionally strict, clocking in twice a day, alternating six day work weeks, meaning you might have unpaid weekend overtime.

Speaker 4:Unpaid? What are you ever paid? You’re a fake company.

Speaker 3:You might not get it, but except for not paying salaries, we are identical to any real company. Feel free to look around.

Simone Collins:Honestly, nice looking kid... Up in The US. This

Speaker 4:company makes you write weekly reports too? What’s the point of writing

Malcolm Collins:this?

Speaker 5:Aren’t you a regular job at so much meaning? My Rich,

Speaker 4:I I just wanna know why you guys are grinding over weekly reports here. What’s the point? I’m not like them. At my old company, already pretended to do nothing all day. Coming here, I’m like a fish in water.

Malcolm Collins:A bright future ahead. Just ignore him. Fresh grads like that, seen tons of them. Big talkers, zero skills, he’ll quit in no time. Unlike a seasoned vet like me, solid.

Simone Collins:Solid. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 4:Don’t be solid here. If you’re solid here, you’re doomed. Hey, Hammer. Why don’t I set up your accounting system too while I’m at it?

Malcolm Collins:My dubbing is pretty good though. Right? Our accounting is good.

Speaker 3:Yeah.... With system because...

Simone Collins:It’s all good books. Shh. Keep it down. Keep it down.

Speaker 4:A fake company keeps fake books, obviously. Your company’s fake, so you really don’t pay taxes. You guys are just a murder mystery lark.

Malcolm Collins:Hammer, is this the fake quote you gave us?

Speaker 3:What’s wrong, miss Lee? Did I quote too high?

Malcolm Collins:Just so you could win the fake bid. We brought in a whole fake bidding crew and put on this whole show.

Speaker 4:Wasn’t it a show to begin with? Why is he so deep in character? Where’d you even hire this

Simone Collins:actor?

Speaker 3:Take care, mister Lee.

Simone Collins:We can work something out.

Speaker 3:You might not know, but he’s our company’s fake client. Used to be a real client, but after getting laid off, he couldn’t handle the drop in status. So he came here to role play as a client.

Speaker 4:So he’s literally just here on a power trip?

Speaker 3:Not entirely. He tipped $200 before he left.

Speaker 4:I’m telling you, this is definitely a larp.

Speaker 3:The corporate world is just one giant movie set anyway. Everyone plays their part. Isn’t that great?

Simone Collins:It’s, like, the most honest thing ever.

Malcolm Collins:A real good job arguing for it.

Simone Collins:Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:I can see why it took off so big.

Simone Collins:No. I I could see it taking off here too. I think your mic shifted or you’re not talking close enough to it.

Malcolm Collins:Oh, I moved the mic. Yeah. So let’s put in another video because I I I gotta really show off

Simone Collins:my Dubbing is so good.

Malcolm Collins:Did you notice the consistent voices across the same character? The flirty voice when she was being flirty.

Simone Collins:And and the natural language and, like, slang use, it’s it’s very,

Malcolm Collins:very good.

Simone Collins:Wow. You know, it’s amazing. And we’re only just beginning. Kinda scary. But, no. Honestly, Malcolm, I I I see it, like, I see it...

Malcolm Collins:Hold Hold on. Hold We’ll it. We’ll watch the...

Speaker 6:I online plan to open a company called Pretend to Work LLC. It has literally everything a real company has. They accept paying you a salary. You only pay $30 a day, and it even comes with free lunch. Zero actual business. He provides cubicles, so people pretending to work and just sit there all day on their phones. He’ll even do rounds periodically, you can still get that thrilling rush of slacking off on the clock.

Simone Collins:He’ll even do rounds. Is that a real is that a real commercial, though, for a real Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:That’s a real commercial for a pretend company.

Simone Collins:No. Look. Look. Hear me out. Okay? There are a lot of people who have really embarrassing gaps on their resumes. I think people would pay a company. In The US, they wouldn’t pay to go to the office. So, no. No. No. I’m not doing that. That is... I think that’s a more Chinese thing. But I could see there being a g…

Join us today for an in in-depth interview with Ace AT, who lived in Iran through war, sanctions, and economic collapse. He shares firsthand details on infrastructure failures like sinkholes and power outages, daily survival strategies, media consumption, social restrictions, and the realities of dating and family life.

The conversation covers Iran’s unique cultural resilience, the rise of atheism and Zoroastrianism, challenges of leaving the country, and his new life in India. A rare, personal look at ordinary life in a place often misunderstood by outsiders. We hope you enjoy it!

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins:Hello. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we have Ace AT, the Iranian guy who is talking on Asmongold’s channel who was in... Lived his life in Iran, was in Iran at the start of the war. And, apparently, he says this is the first interview he’s had because with Asmongold, it was just reacts. And that that makes me so excited because whenever I saw his stuff, it really was fascinating for me to see into this different world. And, obviously, there’s a lot of stuff that we can’t talk about, but the stuff we can talk about is still super exciting. And the things that I wanted to focus on in this interview is I wanted to focus on what it was actually like before the war even just living in a country that is at the place that Iran is at right now in terms of water outages, electricity outages, a 300 fold inflation, you said, since the since

Ace AT:3000.

Simone Collins:3000. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:Since the revolution. how do you how do you relate to money? How do you relate to savings? How do you relate to perishable items when you can use electricity at any time? How do you, all of this is very interesting, but I also wanna focus on media. Like, what media did you grow up consuming? Games did you grow up playing? How did you relate to that? to create a picture of... For a lot of people, I think, like a normal human living in Iran going into all of this. Because Iran... Just to pontificate a little bit, Iran is a very interesting country for Americans to think about because they’re... Most Americans know Persian families or Persian, like, people who have lived in America for multiple generations. And so there isn’t, like, a specific... An ethnic animosity that you would expect and you would see in some wars or ethnic foreignness. and so the idea of, like, there’s real people in Iran actually doing stuff and protesting and all of that, that’s, something that I think, is really cool to to see. So first, what we were talking about before this that I was shocked about, we were talking about sinkholes because I prefer just like... Sinkholes are, like, a common problem in, like, the capital, and you can just, like, disappear into a sinkhole and, like, people die. I I forgot what it was, but, like, 20 people a year, I think it was. but you said, actually, like, a big chunk of the capital is over a sinkhole and could fall. Can you talk about that?

Ace AT:Yeah. Sure. So, basically, the earlier time before the revolution, the capital was announced to be inside of Tehran. So while that happened, a lot of people started, like, moving towards it, and they were expecting a maximum amount of 15 to 20,000,000 people instead of the capital. But they said if it expands too much, it might decrease the stability of the sinkholes because the entire capital is surrounded by mountains. So the only way you can get out of the capital was... Is, like, by three or four roads that, like, leads out of the capital.

Simone Collins:Wow. Okay. Okay.

Ace AT:That’s why it’s basically... Oh my god. I can’t talk. Strategically? Oh my god. Okay. So back in the day, it was very difficult to attack that one per... Place.

Simone Collins:That makes sense. Yes. So you have built in fortress. Yes.

Ace AT:But back then, they didn’t really know about sinkholes and stuff. It just happened. So now the average, I think, estimate of the amount of people inside there is 40,000,000, which is, like, two times more than it’s supposed to be, and it’s shrinking a lot. Like, the the, like, the ground is going in

Malcolm Collins:every year by year. I wanna provide a little context here. The reason why sinkholes have become such a problem in the capital and the reason the ground is shrinking is because there was a large reservoir under the capital of water. But because they are dealing with a massive water shortage, they drained the reservoir significantly. Yeah. So now there’s a giant hole under the capital.

Simone Collins:Well, are there plans to, like, insert liquid into the

Malcolm Collins:Are there plans to do anything? No. I don’t think there’s plans to do anything. So you said, like, 40% could just collapse one day?

Ace AT:pretty much. If something like that happens more than I pretty much estimate twenty million people will get badly hurt to death even. The sinkhole is pretty terrible. The main reason is because the water shortages that kept happening inside of the country, and we we had drought for, like, two, three years. It was it was bad. So as... If you looked at the map while the, like, clouds tried to come inside the country, they instantly dissipated. From Turkey or from anywhere tried to come inside of Iran, instantly vanished. So we... Nobody knew why. It was just happening. And because of that, we had a massive drought. All of the lakes just completely went dry. We had a very massive lake on top left of the country, and that is almost completely depleted.

Malcolm Collins:This giant lake that’s just gone. I mean, part of it was due to the overbuilding of dams during the revolutionary period. Yeah. And and they’re trying to rebuild the capital in the Southern East section. Right? But I think that’s mostly a pipe dream. Do you do you... I mean, is that gonna happen? Or

Ace AT:Maybe. I have no clue what exactly the government is planning to do because it’s very... I’m sorry, but it’s very disorganized. I I can’t lie. They just do whatever it’s, like, necessary for that one specific thing, but don’t care about whatever repercussions that happen afterwards.

Malcolm Collins:Oh my god. Okay.

Simone Collins:So... Although that’s... You could say that pretty much about any government now.

Ace AT:You want me to give you an example?

Malcolm Collins:Yes. Give...

Ace AT:Basically, there was a river. Right? There was a river that was artificially made near the capital. And what happened was it started smelling very bad. Ugh. And people wanted to fix it. And the governor said, well, that’s gonna cost too much. We’re not gonna fix it. So because of that, they use the water that was going to that artificial lake to the stadium of football. Because of... They... Because they didn’t fix that, now the stadium was smelling very bad. And now they said, now you have to fix the stadium and the lake. And they said, okay. We’re not gonna do that. It’s too expensive. So they connected another lake to both of them to try to fix it. Instead, that lake got corrupted as well. So it’s

Simone Collins:been very bad. So... Yeah. Oh my gosh. Wait.

Malcolm Collins:How did they come... Hold on. I I need to understand the logistic. How did they... And why did they think it was a good idea to connect the lake to

Simone Collins:the stadium? Flush it out.

Ace AT:Because, when you’re trying to clean stuff out and, like, keep the grass and everything always healthy and stuff like that, they need a lot of water. So they were trying to connect it with like that so they can be a little bit more lazy, you know, but also cost efficient.

Simone Collins:But Oh, but it’s just sort of, like,

Malcolm Collins:drain it, like, use it for stadium purposes, and then that Yeah. Drain the the bad lake. Okay. Yeah. That Yeah. That is horrible. so I wanna know more about, like, daily life in terms of how you... And keep in mind, some things may feel normal to you that would be... That that that they’re going to be the most interesting things to other people in …

It’s clear that the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are gaining prominence, especially with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez being the longstanding frontrunner in betting markets for the 2028 Democratic presidential nominee. What makes this interesting is just how extreme the DSA’s views are. While sometimes the DSA’s “defund the police” stance breaks into mainstream media, that’s actually one of their tamer stances in the larger scheme of things.

So join us today as we explore the DSA’s actual program and discuss what a DSA-led America what might actually look like. Sure is interesting!

Show Notes

DSA Structure

Founded in 1982 through the merger of two leftist orgs, the DSA is made up of a National Convention (its highest decision-making body which convenes every two years) and super autonomous local chapters.

* National leadership

* Is where all dues go; they’re then partially redistributed back to chapters

* Made up of:

* The National Political Committee (NPC): serves as collective leadership and a board of directors

* A Steering Committee that makes interim decisions, oversees staff and finances, charters and revokes chapters and commissions, and implements convention priorities

* The NPC and national staff provide resources, field organizers, training, shared tools (phone/text banking, compliance help), and national priority campaigns.

* Local chapters

* Are required to affirm the national body’s principles and basic democratic norms.

* Send delegates to the convention proportional to their membership

* At the convention, they set strategy & priorities, elect leadership, and adopt resolutions and platforms

* Do the day-to-day political work

* Have their own membership meetings, bylaws, officers, and sophisticated internal structures

* Youth wing: Young Democratic Socialists of America (YSDA)

Active Members

The DSA started growing explosively with Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign and the election of President Trump.

* Membership went from around 6500 in 2014-2016 to over 120,000 now (+ median age dropped significantly)

According to Peter Sterne (News & Opinion Editor @CityAndStateNY)

“As of the end of July, DSA has about 129,000 dues-paying members.

NYC-DSA has about 15,800 members.

Next 5 largest chapters are:

* At-large (i.e. not in a local chapter): 6,500 members

* LA: 6,000 members

* DC: 4,000 members

* Portland: 3,700 members

* Chicago: 3,300 members”

Every member of the DSA simultaneously belongs to the national organization and one local chapter (or “at large” if no group exists nearby)

* Which is rich because this August The Hill reported that “Ocasio-Cortez is not a member of the DSA’s national branch but maintains ties to her local chapter in the Big Apple.” (that’s NOT A THING)

DSA Stances

I’ve bolded all the ones I think are actually cool

Their current program:

* THRIVING WORKING CLASS COMMUNITIES

* Freedom To Flourish

* “Expand public resources to support recreation, learning, and social spaces accessible to all. Establish paid family leave for all workers, a 32 hour work week with full pay and benefits, and a living minimum wage. Provide free, quality public education from pre-K to college and cancel all student debt.”

* Healthcare For All

* “Guarantee universal healthcare at no cost to individuals, including complete access to reproductive and gender-affirming care. Expand healthcare access and quality by investing in new public hospitals and clinics. Make all medical education and training public and free.”

* Housing For All:

* “Build new, publicly-owned social housing, strictly regulate investment properties, establish universal rent control, and guarantee right to counsel for all tenants.”

* Finish Reconstruction:

* “End the legacies of slavery and colonialism. Reinforce anti-discrimination laws. Honor all treaties and tribal sovereignty. Enact reparations and massively invest in good jobs, quality housing and infrastructure in neglected minority communities.”

* End Mass Incarceration and Police Immunity

* (this is basically reworded “abolish the police”)

* “Demilitarize police departments, disempower police unions, and redirect funding to public services as steps towards fully abolishing the police and prison system which protects the rich and jails the poor. Treat drug addiction and mental illness as health issues, not crimes. End qualified immunity and empower civilian oversight bodies with real authority over the police.”

* Feminism For All

* “Stop gender violence and end policies that oppress bodily autonomy and intimate life, including patriarchal restrictions on abortion, childbirth and childraising, gender expression and transition, marriage, and divorce. Ban sex discrimination and ensure fair compensation and support for all forms of labor, including care work.”

* Green New Deal

* “Pass a federal jobs guarantee. Implement massive investment in sustainable, publicly owned energy and transit infrastructure. Phase out the use of fossil fuels. Reclaim and repair our earth’s resources for all.”

* NOTE: A federal jobs guarantee generally means the federal government would ensure a paid public-service job is available on request to people who are ready and willing to work, especially if they cannot find adequate private-sector employment.

* WORKING-CLASS FOREIGN POLICY

* End The U.S. War Machine

* “End all foreign wars and close overseas military bases. Support and fully employ veterans. End immunity for U.S. war criminals and support the International Criminal Court’s mandate to prosecute war crimes.”

* Free Palestine

* “Recognize the rights of the Palestinian people, including the right of return, the right to resist military occupation, and the right to self determination in a free Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital. End all military and economic aid to Israel. Prosecute U.S. and Israeli leaders responsible for the genocide in Gaza.”

* Note: They’re SUPER against Israel. There’s one candidate, Nithya Raman, an LA city council and mayoral candidate, whose endorsement might be expelled from the DSA because she failure to properly probe or affirm her support for BDS (an international campaign seeking to pressure Israel over its treatment of Palestinians.) and anti-Zionism even though she was previously censured for accepting an endorsement from a pro-Israel group.

* End Blockades, Embargoes, and Sanctions

* “End economic warfare against countries whose governments act independently of the United States, such as Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran.”

* Abolish ICE

* “Legalize migration, grant amnesty for all immigrants regardless of status, provide a path to citizenship for all permanent residents, and end visa caps and quotas.”

* WORKING-CLASS DEMOCRACY

* Democracy For All

* “Extend full voting rights to all permanent U.S. residents and restore the right to vote for incarcerated people and people with criminal convictions. Establish statehood for Washington D.C. and recognize the right to self-determination for all U.S. territories and colonies. Expand and protect voting rights and end voter suppression.”

* A Real Democracy

* “For the working class to govern, we need a new political system. End political corruption and legalized bribery: get rid of lobbyists, dark money, and Citizens United, and publicly finance all elections. Abolish the Electoral College. Replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.”

* A Democratic Congress

* “Replace the two-party system with a multi-party democracy. Expand the House of Representatives, implement proportional representation and ranked choice voting in all elections, and abolish the Senate.”

* Economic Democracy

* “Establish public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability to the people. Enact aggressive wealth taxes on the richest individuals and corporations to spend on public goods and infrastructure.”

* Democracy At Work

* “Empower workers to come together and fight the boss. Protect, expand, and enforce the rights of all workers to form, join, and strike with their unions, regardless of industry. Support union members who organize reform caucuse…

What if, by asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, God was testing him? While his response showed obedience, Abraham demonstrated a total lack of independent moral judgment, which signaled to God that the Israelites required a FAR more micromanagey covenant, including super specific rules against child sacrifice (you’d think this would go without saying, but… well, God checked and Abraham demonstrated otherwise).

In today’s deep exploration of the story of Abraham and Isaac, Malcolm demonstrates that the test was never about whether Abraham would receive the promise but about the nature of the relationship between God and his people.

The discussion contrasts surface readings with deeper interpretations, examines Jewish and New Testament perspectives, and explains why the Jewish covenant emphasizes strict rules while highlighting moral agency in other traditions. It also addresses real-world implications of misreading such stories and how the account distinguishes different approaches to faith and scripture.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins:Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, We are gonna be exploring the Lindsey Clancy of the bible, in this... Today’s tract. And this... Of all of the tracks that I have ever put together in terms of, like, studying the bible, attempting to understand it, This one threw me for the biggest wrench at first. Yes. It also had one of the biggest realizations for me that completely transform how I see the entire biblical narrative. Not only that, but once you notice it, there is no other way that this story can be read Really? To be logically consistent.

Simone Collins:Woah. Okay. This is very... Okay. Yeah. I’ve... Sorry. I’m extremely intrigued because I really don’t like child sacrifice. I’m like, how could this guy

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. If a god asked one of his people to commit a child sacrifice.

Simone Collins:Yeah. Like, that’s the whole thing is, like, that’s why god constantly is, stop, like, Moloch, this whole thing. Stop, you know, the baby sacrifice.

Speaker 3:Yeah. But

Malcolm Collins:that is that is what defines a people often in the bible as so evil they deserve a complete eradication.

Simone Collins:It’s a named no no in Leviticus. You do not pass your seed through the fire to Moloch. Like, it’s it’s... We don’t do child sacrifice at

Speaker 3:the end.

Malcolm Collins:If this story is read on face value, it says that a number of really bad things. It says that the only reason we don’t do child sacrifice isn’t because it’s wrong, but it’s because god hasn’t asked us to yet. Oh. And that if god did ask us to do child sacrifice, we should do child sacrifice or at least go all the way to attempt to because presumably... And we’ll get into the various alternate aspects. I’m just going for the Sunday school explanation first. Right? We’re going for the easiest understanding, the surface at face value as it’s taught to me as a kid. It implied to me as it was taught to me as a kid that, yeah, if god tells you to kill your kids, if you’re a moral person, you will kill your kids.

Simone Collins:Well... And I think the big problem is that a lot of people have, I think, killed their kids thinking that God talked to Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:Specific instances. If you wanna be like, Abraham’s a good guy. First of all, Abraham was not a good guy. We’ll get into this. He had a habit of pulling this trick where he would have his wife marry other men that extorts things from them. What? He did this multiple times. he’s kind of a douche canoe. Why

Simone Collins:are people naming their kids Abraham then?

Malcolm Collins:Because that part is often forgotten that he liked burying his wife to other men and Well,

Simone Collins:but we all know the child sacrifice part, and I... That’s why I was so confused. Just like this isn’t one of those, you know, big name bible people, like the ones that we actually Right. People in

Malcolm Collins:the kids offer.

Speaker 4:So we have another episode that we will do where we will dig deeper into this specifically because it is just so utterly bizarre, but he does it twice. Isn’t it? Like, he he has an excuse every time for how he accidentally, whenever he comes to a neighborhood, tries to get his wife to have sex with whoever the most powerful man is in that neighborhood or marry them. And the second time, god even, like, comes in and he tells the guy, he’s like, no. That’s... This woman’s married. He... Somebody’s trying to get you to have sex with this married woman. And then his son does it too, by the way. it’s it’s utterly bizarre, and it is, I think not in line with what a lot of people remember from the story. So, yeah, he always has an excuse for why he did it, but, like, that had happened twice. I’m like, I don’t believe you. This was this was the beginning of your fortune. You made your fortune doing this. That’s weird.

Speaker 25:I’m telling you, you’re a pimp.

Speaker 26:No. Are you even listening to the story? Anyway, one day I wake up and I look in the mirror and I don’t like what I see. I mean, I I had gotten out of control and I I didn’t even realize that.

Speaker 25:You can’t have a conscience in the pimp game

Speaker 24:And in regards to the morality of this, think about this from the perspective of his wife who he is pimping out to, in the most charitable interpretation, protect himself. But in the, I think, actual, if you look at what happens, because every time he shakes these guys down for lots of money, to make money, why why does he always have to ask them for money? He doesn’t do that. There’s this interim period where a guy, he did war or something. He’s like, I’m not gonna ask you for money, no one can say I ask you for money. He knows what he’s doing here. He knows what he’s doing here.

Malcolm Collins:The the Abraham story... I mean, God does say that Abraham loves him or is beloved by him or his friend. It’s sometimes translated. And we know that by... The bible, God is okay and will make heroes of people of low moral character take David. Right? Like, sending out somebody who... To die in a war so that you can marry their wife, right, is... That person died out of loyalty to David. That is to me one of the lowest things of... Like, I almost cannot imagine anything more immoral than using somebody’s trust in you to murder them to sleep with their wife. It’s...

Simone Collins:Yeah. Truly. So

Malcolm Collins:That is about as low as you get. And yet David is one of god’s... You know, and people... Some Jews are like, no. He’s okay because he repented afterwards. I’m like, he said he was sorry. He said he was sorry. What? I’m like, well, he was still being used by God before he repented. Right? He was still God’s champion before he repented. Yeah. He may he may repent eventually, but... And then you can look at Solomon, for example. You don’t get to be much a bigger douche canoe than Solomon. Solomon’s entire story, he’s just, like, not a good guy. And we’ll we’ll get into that story one day. So, I don’t think it’s it’s particularly big a thing. That is not what God looks for in his heroes and stories. That was not the problem for me. I don’t have a problem that you do not have to be a moral paragon to have a good relationship with god. What I have a problem with is two things. One, god establishing a precedent that he might ask you... You might hear a voice in your head. Like, is it a good thing in a religious tradition to have a precedent that if you hear a voice in your head telling you to kill your kids, maybe you should? That is... Especially given that, like, multiple people have acted on this. And, no, Lindsay Clancy did say one of the reasons she did it as a Catholic was so that she could meet her kids in heaven when she killed her. It wasn’t the exact same

Simone Collins:as god told her but, like, yeah, it was part of the equation. Didn’t they? I mean, so I I all... I could not honestly engage with the the court information because it... This is too hard for me …

A detailed examination of historical records showing patterns of relationships between local women and occupying forces during major conflicts. The discussion covers data from World War I occupations in France and Belgium, World War II cases including France and Japan, and comparisons between hostile and allied occupations. It explores evolutionary psychology factors, cooperation studies, genetic ancestry evidence, and implications for group dynamics.

The conversation also addresses male behavior in similar contexts, biblical references, and long-term strategies for post-conquest stability. It draws on primary sources, historian estimates, and experimental research to provide context on these recurring historical patterns.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins:Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. In the, manosphere, one of the common topics is how women like to sleep with the enemies... The invading enemies during war. And I had heard this historically, and my take on it was... I mean, I guess, maybe, but I decided to do a bit more of a breakdown of this, get the actual numbers. How much of a population comes from this? Why do women do this? Why do we let a population that has a propensity for facilitating the enemy vote in our elections? What would these women likely do if asked to vote on policies like in Well, it’s just... Oh, boy.

Simone Collins:Oh, why are we...

Malcolm Collins:Oh. When I went into this data, the thing that really surprised me, because what you could argue is this is just a function of having a large army within a territory for a period. Right? But if we break down different instances, like the American occupation of France versus similar time window, the Nazi occupation of France, because America occupied France as we were pushing back the Nazis, the French women barely married or had kids with the Americans, whereas they did it in huge numbers with the Nazis. If we look in the case of Americans because the Americans were stationed in New Zealand, they were stationed in Australia, they were stationed in many places, if you’re talking about the Pacific Theater, barely had any marriages out of that. A huge number, orders of magnitude more when Americans were occupying Japan, like an actual hostile conquest even though they treated them fairly nice during that period. so what we’re seeing here is women seem to have a propensity to get with a specific type of male. But let’s go into it. You’re gonna say something, Simone?

Simone Collins:This is bizarre to me because, of course, I only exist because a French boar bride married an American Okie and had my mom. Right?

Malcolm Collins:I think that’s okay. I think it’s fine to marry into a force liberating your country. I think it is quite a different thing

Simone Collins:to worry Didn’t the Nazis frame it as, like, I’m coming to liberate France from your Frenchness or something?

Malcolm Collins:They almost did. They almost did. Say, lovey, look at France today allowing itself to be looted and massacred.

Simone Collins:It’s not looking very good for them. You know, you gotta you gotta say it’s

Malcolm Collins:You think about all these... Like, all the, Irish terrorist organizations to earn their independence only to sell out their country, like, a generation later.

Simone Collins:Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:For real. It is it is wild to me, these historic conflicts reframed. But let’s get into it. I’m gonna start with one of the lesser known examples so we can go into it Yeah. Which is a World War one interwar period between 1914 and nineteen thirties, the occupied Northern France and Belgium region, that led to the term femmes et broches. German occupation of Belgium, and 10 French departments precluded extensive contact between women and German soldiers. Diaries from the period mentioned these relationships frequently to the point where they are actually mentioned in two thirds of all diaries surveyed.

Simone Collins:Are you serious?

Malcolm Collins:That’s No. Mentioned, that doesn’t mean that they weren’t mentioned approvingly.

Simone Collins:Oh, like, maybe their friend Yeah. He was But it was

Malcolm Collins:a common part of life.

Simone Collins:That is bizarre. I just figure you... One, if you were involved with a foreign invader male that maybe your entire community would think that you’re a spy and ostracize you? And then two, wouldn’t you get in trouble for doing that with the foreign invading?

Malcolm Collins:Of these women were ostracized later, but let’s go into numbers here. Okay?

Simone Collins:Okay.

Malcolm Collins:So, there were roughly 6,000 in Belgium and 10 to 20,000 in the occupied French departments, often registered as father unknown or illegitimate birth. This is for how many children were born as a result of this. To understand how much of, impact this had, Douai, one of the districts, saw birth rates go from... In prewar, they were around ten percent, okay, to during the war, note, the local men are gone during the war, okay, to twenty to thirty eight percent.

Simone Collins:That... That’s like a... That’s almost a third.

Malcolm Collins:You mean that’s more than tripling, almost quadrupling if the 38%

Simone Collins:is for a number of birth is right and at

Malcolm Collins:least doubling the birth rate is. Well, all the local men are away. That’s So, again, not a simple phenomenon. no. No. Sure. This was a heavily occupied district where you didn’t see this as much in the rural areas where you didn’t have any... As many standing troops and stuff like this. So it didn’t have as big of a neg... Genetic impact. So historian Emmanuel Dettour estimates that there were 15 to 20,000 rapes during this period. That said, there were over 50,000 instances of sexual contact. So that means that the rape... You say this is downstream of rapes. It’s not downstream as a rape. Detroit’s core primary source with a corpus of 110 private diaries kept by civilians, about the intimate relationships with German soldiers, which, again, were in two thirds of them. the dominant mentions are, sort of moral panic, and they were thought of as traitors from a brochures or affiliates brochures or worse. a common, motif appears in the diaries where local girls or women are visibly upset when particular German units left. one formulation that surfaces is the observation of girls were seen crying when the soldiers departed.

Simone Collins:Oh my gosh. Wait. Wasn’t this a theme in the sound of music? Wasn’t, one of the older girls super all about, what was his name, Hans or Frans or something?

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. And what the women would often do is they’d flee to some town where they weren’t known afterwards, so the kid wouldn’t be known as the descendant of a Nazi. But in studies after this period, they represented the children as German fathers, 1.5% of the population.

Simone Collins:Oh my gosh. It was the uniforms. Okay.

Malcolm Collins:There’s see this in other instances as well. I’m just I’m just pointing out, this is more of a thing than people often lead on. Now let’s, contrast this, okay, with The United States numbers. Alright? So US soldiers in France and Britain and Rhineland formed relationship with thousands of marriages. While exact totals are uncertain, these range from only 5,000 to 18,000, with one number or in figure is 6,000 bona fide marriages. so very, very low when contrasted with the French. And what’s interesting is that the Americans wanted to get married and form families. Whereas with the Nazis, we only know of about 13, like, a handful, like, in the teens of Nazi soldiers who actually married a local person.

Simone Collins:Could this be a timing thing? I mean, because my grandmother, for example, met my grandfather after the war was over when the Americans were still in Paris. Like, presumably, you’re into family formation when the wartime is over and not so much in the middle of the

Malcolm Collins:It’s part a policy thing in American attitude thing.

Simone Collins:Also, you’re saying, …

This episode examines claims that AI detectors like Pangram unfairly flag writing by African and Black authors as artificial. Analysis of publication data from the Pan African Review and individual authors (most entertainingly by Cremieux) reveals a sharp rise in AI-generated and AI-assisted content coinciding with the availability of large language models.

The discussion extends to similar patterns among other academics and journalists who publicly oppose AI while relying on it for their work. Examples include university administrators, book reviewers, and media figures facing scrutiny over undisclosed AI assistance. The conversation highlights tensions in elite institutions around transparency, performance expectations, and evolving tools for content creation.

Broader themes include differing responses to AI detection across communities and the challenges of maintaining integrity standards as AI adoption grows in professional writing.

Show Notes

Hat tip to Cremieux for Does African Writing Sound Like AI?

Black Academics Using AI And Lying About It

From Cremieux:

“If you read about Pangram, you’ll quickly see a bunch of people claiming that it doesn’t work. Worse, they’ll sometimes claim that it’s biased. Pangram allegedly discriminates against autistic authors, against anti-vaccine authors, against people I’d politely describe as ‘conspiracy theorists’ on both sides of the aisle, and, most prominently, against African writers. How? Well, it supposedly flags their work as AI!

There are a lot of articles about Pangram and other AI detectors ‘mistakenly’ flagging Black and African authors as using AI to do or assist with their writing. The most prominent piece that comes to mind for me was published in the Pan African Review. The piece was an unusual breakout for the Review: the journal generally enjoys a pretty limited circulation. I suspect this is because of the import of the topic area and the utility of providing an example to point to when people want to explain why they were ‘wrongly’ flagged as using AI for writing. So, I’ll consider the perspective of this piece to be emblematic of a community’s wider concerns given how much it resonated.

The piece is authored by one Timi Olagunju. Olagunju is “a lawyer and public policy expert working at the intersection of tech, governance, and development.” His claim is that writing in formal English will be flagged as AI-generated by AI text detector:

“Consider an international student in the United States. She has spent years being told that her English must be grammatically correct. She avoids slang, checks every verb and structures each paragraph carefully. Then a detector labels her work artificial because it is controlled and predictable. First, the institution tells her to master standard English through IELTS and TOEFL. Then it treats mastery as suspicious.”

This allegedly explains why “African (or black) writers” are liable to have their work flagged by AI detectors:

“For many African writers like Falade, English is both a language and an inheritance shaped by colonial history. In Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and other former British colonies, generations of students were taught forms of English influenced by British education. Teachers emphasized correctness, formal composition and structure.”

Is this the case? We can test this right away by inputting Olagunju’s own article into Pangram and… it receives a 100% AI score with high confidence. Surely he wouldn’t use AI to write, right? Let’s consider his thesis in good faith and perish the thought—for now. Surely the other writers in the Pan African Review wouldn’t use AI to write either, right?

To test the extent of AI adoption in the Pan African Review, I looked at how much Pangram flagged articles there over time. Unfortunately, the site is currently down, so I had to extract whatever articles I could from the Internet Archive.1 What we see right away is a total rejection of Olagunju’s thesis: articles were never flagged as AI-generated before the advent of LLMs, and the share flagged as AI-written has rapidly crept up afterwards. This is not what we expect if African writing generally is to be considered liable to be flagged as AI.

Another test of Olagunju’s thesis is to simply look at his writing. He wouldn’t lie about this stuff, would he? All of his past work before LLMs came out should return a 100% AI score with at least moderate confidence. Alas, quite literally none of it that I could find does. All of it shows up as human-written. It’s only after LLMs came out that his work started being flagged as AI-generated.

But maybe we’re at fault here. Maybe Pangram trained on the Pan African Review and Olagunju’s work and they flag pre-LLM work as AI-generated because it’s in the training set. To get at this question, I asked Pangram CEO Max Spero if that was the case: was “Pangram trained on the articles in the Pan African Review?” “It was not.”

Jason Arday

The first thing I thought about when it came to matters of “prominently black academics who center discussions of race” and potentia

* Academics Dave Harris and Martyn Hammersley raised concerns in 2023 about similarities between an Arday paper on minority students’ mental health and an earlier study by Anjum Memon and colleagues. Two journals subsequently published corrections addressing attribution or textual overlap.

* More importantly, some quotations presented as coming from Arday’s own interview participants closely resembled quotations from participants in Memon’s earlier study. Retraction Watch documented examples and reported that Arday later removed or altered numerous participant quotations.

* If substantiated, presenting another study’s interview material as one’s own would be a research-data issue, not merely inadequate citation.

Cambridge initially defended him, but on August 5, 2026, announced an investigation into qualifications and honorary appointments, alongside ongoing academic-misconduct complaints. He resigned that day, explicitly saying his resignation was not an acceptance of the allegations

Doing the Pengram Thing with His Work

Fighting the tide: Understanding the difficulties facing Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) Doctoral Students’ pursuing a career in Academia (2018) - 100% human written per Pangram

Understanding Mental Health: What Are the Issues for Black and Ethnic Minority Students at University? (2018) - 100% human written per Pangram

Couldn’t find solely authored 2025-2026 articles by Jason Arday (everything is co-authored; the only solely authored things in 2020 or earlier), but we do have:

* 2026: “Same storm, different boats: the impact of COVID-19 on Black students and academic staff in UK and US higher education” (with Christopher Jones), Higher Education (2026). - 100% per Pangram

* DOI: 10.1007/s10734-022-00939-0

* 2026: “The fragile future of EDI demands bold university leadership” — WonkheWritten by Arun Verma and Jason Arday. - 100% per Pangram

* 2025: “The routes to intellectual authority in a prior colonial empire”A bibliographic index identifies it as co-authored with Dina Zoe Belluigi and Joanne O’Keeffe, rather than solely authored by Arday - 100% per Pangram

Academics Using AI and Lying About It

In August of this year, Santiago Schnell, Dartmouth College provost, published a Washington Post op-ed arguing that universities should ensure degrees reflect what students can do independently of AI (as opposed to with it).

* According to Atlantic coverage of his subsequent kerfuffle, Pangram scored it 100% AI-written in a Semafor analysis.

* A subsequent Dartmouth student newspaper investigation of nine of his 2026 publications (op-eds and academic pieces) found a median ~96% AI-written score; his pre-ChatGPT (pre-late 2022) works scored 100% human.

* His emailed statement responding to the accusations was itself scored 100% AI-written by Pangram.

* He acknowledged using AI chatbots as “assistive tools” for language, clarity, and efficiency while insisting the ideas and authorship were his. The case pr…

This episode explores the rabbit clock meme frequently posted in female streamer chats and its dual implications around fertility timelines and career longevity in content creation. We examine quotes from progressive streamers including Pinkabina, Valkyrie, Norissa Ravencroft, and QT Cinderella as they discuss their own experiences with baby fever. The conversation also covers the meme’s apparent erasure from sites like Know Your Meme and Reddit, personal reflections on miscarriage and family planning, realities of egg freezing, and examples of graceful aging in online spaces.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins:. Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, I discovered a deep rabbit hole, if you will. Okay? Specifically... Okay. So here is the image. There’s this meme. This came up in a conversation with Simone because she’s been feeling intense baby fever recently. And I started to be like, well, it’d be cool to go into all of the progressive streamers who are feeling baby fever and sort of go over how their audience has reacted to that. And I was like, and, of course, we’re going to cover this meme. Now do you know why... To a lot of our fans, this meme

Simone Collins:immediately means something to them. Yeah. Malcolm’s showing a picture of a rabbit pointing to a clock. And I know I’ve seen this before, but I don’t know Okay. So It looks familiar. What does it mean?

Malcolm Collins:Frequently, it is posted to mean your time to have a baby is running out.

Simone Collins:Isn’t it the rabbit from Alice

Malcolm Collins:from Alice in Wonder. So this comes from two well known streamers, Valkyrie and Sina, who in a November 2025 stream said, post a selfie. One of those Instill accounts will post my photo with a rabbit clock. Seriously? Yes.

Simone Collins:Like, every time?

Malcolm Collins:I have personally seen it spammed in streamer chats before. Wow. It is very common. When a

Simone Collins:female Like a thirst trap picture or just

Malcolm Collins:a selfie? Anything. Basically, it’s just when a woman is... I mean, selfies are thirst trap pictures, Simone. These women, that’s their job. Okay?

Simone Collins:Not when I take them. I’ll tell you what.

Malcolm Collins:Well, you’re not an ethot. Okay? You don’t know how to be sexy. That is not in your vocabulary since the end you

Simone Collins:were This is my sexy pose. She said

Malcolm Collins:but they pose this alongside a picture of them. And it was enough of a problem that major streamers were crashing out about this. Right? Like, I... This is getting very frustrating. And you can imagine, you know, you start to talk about... This could really get to me if I was a woman, to be

Simone Collins:Really?

Malcolm Collins:You start talking

Simone Collins:It’s just people chuckling to themselves about something that you don’t care about. Why should that annoy people?

Malcolm Collins:What do you mean that you don’t care about? If you are a female streamer

Simone Collins:Okay.

Malcolm Collins:It means... And it’s two really big meanings for female streamers, and they’re both, like, apocalyptic for them. One, you’re talking about having baby fever, and somebody posts this, which basically is saying you’re never gonna have a kid. You’re not trying right now. You’re almost at the end of your cycle, so you’re gonna live your life barren. But then two, it’s pointing out that their career intrinsically has a timer.

Simone Collins:Oh, but then they just become a VTuber. They create an AI version of themselves that never gets young.

Malcolm Collins:That is I mean, old. Not something that happens. Rare. So, typically, in person streamer females Good example of this is, like, I think, Casey Tron. They just age and become old middle aged women doing middle aged woman stuff for their fans.

Simone Collins:Is Casey Tron the one who wears a hijab?

Malcolm Collins:Is she... Hold on. Which one is she again? Trying to think... The one that I’m thinking of is the stoner one who, like, looks actively old. Might be Casey Tron.

Simone Collins:Oh, Casey. Yeah. Okay. Never mind. That’s not the one who wears a hijab. Yeah. Casey Tron looks like she would... She tries to be attractive. Yes. That didn’t... That’s in...

Malcolm Collins:Actually, I have not seen any instances of them going and trying to be a VTuber of of real life YouTubers. They just sort of end up irrelevant. This has happened to major female stars. This has happened to... It’s sort of being like, you’re only here because of how attractive you are, and you’re not gonna be attractive forever. So it has a double meaning. Right? What is fascinating and what I found when I was doing this deep dive, Simone This double meaning, history that our fans will be familiar with from streams that they have watched is being erased within the year of the historic event happening.

Simone Collins:Wait. What?

Malcolm Collins:So this meme only became... I was actually surprised by this. It only became popular in 2020 No. Or 2024 because

Simone Collins:Feels so much more familiar than that. With, yeah, with posting it.

Malcolm Collins:So maybe maybe it’s a couple years old. But, yeah, it’s it’s... Right now, it’s being used in this way. If you go to know your meme

Simone Collins:Wow.

Malcolm Collins:Nowhere on know your meme does it mention that the meme is used in this way. It says that it’s a meme about running out of time, you know, for, like, getting to class on time and stuff. literally, completely scrubbed. But it’s not just scrubbed from know your meme. So if you look at the Reddit post on this, right, the Peter explains the joke from one year ago. What does this mean? I see it everywhere. Okay? It shows this meme. It’s got over 500 upvotes, so it’s like a... You know, for a medium sub that’s gonna hit pretty high up. Alright. So you then look at the comments. Right? And you’re like, Okay. So they’re not mentioning it in the first comment. They’re not mentioning it in the second comment. They’re not mentioning... Like, here’s an example of the third comment. How [bleep] look when you say quarter till 09:00 instead of just 08:45. Right? That’s, that’s not how the meme is used. And then you get to the fifth comment, and it’s removed.

Simone Collins:Oh. Uh-oh.

Malcolm Collins:Why is the why is the fifth comment

Simone Collins:removed? I get that Who moderates know your meme? Wait. Someone who’s, like, very No. Defensive about female aging?

Malcolm Collins:That’s not that’s not proof that the fifth comment was this particular explanation. And then you can look at the comments under it, and it’s, people use it on post talking about being x age without having had a baby, become a millionaire, etcetera, So, clearly, it it was talking about babies just, like, from the context of the comments under it. So even on Reddit, they’re going around and deleting any instance of people saying that it was used in this way? That is fascinating. That is interesting. I need to know more. so that then had me be like, why? Of all of the memes that I’ve seen... Like, I haven’t gone back to, like, try to dig into the history of many memes online, but why did they have to really erase this meme from the collective memory of the Internet? Why was it erased from know your meme? Why was it erased from Reddit? Why has it been so thoroughly erased from the Internet? that if you ask an AI about this, you have to explicitly prime it with this understanding and people having had crash ups about it that were public enough that now it’s aware that, like, people were crashing out about it. Why is it important that this meme was erased from history? What the heck? Why Yeah.

Simone Collins:Camera Oh.

Malcolm Collins:I’ll try to catch that the next time I see it.

Simone Collins:Okay.

Malcolm Collins:Anyway, why was it erased? and I think the issue is is exactly what I was saying with you. It’s it’s a few fault. One is the degree to which female streamers have crashed out about this particular meme being spammed is higher than other types of crash …