Many Such Takes: JD Vance vs. Pope, Vladimir STOP, Feeding Dads

The most unhinged discourse of the week, always free

Apr 27, 2025

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JD Vance vs. Pope

I almost didn’t cover this topic because it felt like it was in poor taste, but I made a mistake last week by failing to write about the turbo-poasting lib Nicholas Decker, who was visited by Secret Service and summarily evicted by his landord for vaguely threatening an armed liberal revolution via Substack. Hilarious as it was, I saw that story and (perhaps foolishly) thought it was too scary and Secret Servicey to touch.

Then this week, the Pope died a mere seven hours after meeting JD Vance. The first few tweets on the topic were funny, but I thought, those are just a few edgy people joking about something clearly very serious and sad, only to realize that actually, my whole TL was joking about it, including people who aren’t particularly edgy. So to be clear, the Pope dying isn’t funny. The Pope dying suspiciously quickly after meeting JD Vance is…well, it’s at least worthy of a few jokes, right?

Anyway, JD Vance was quick to deny culpability, by letting everyone know the Pope was “obviously very ill.” Sure, JD.

Let us dream…

Hey, maybe AI *can* create art:

I almost forgot about this:

Vladimir, STOP

After recent Russian strikes on Ukraine, Trump had some choice words for his old pal Vlad:

While Trump is no stranger to creating accidental viral phrases (I have an entire other article about that) this one went viral immediately, specifically the “Vladimir, STOP!” part.

Honestly though, I don’t think “Vladimir, STOP!” has legs. Trump is extremely meme-able, but this is going to be considered a deep cut a year from now. The best Trumpism of 2025 so far was probably “Everything is computer.”

Anyway, there’s only one way to make sure Vladimir stops—have JD Vance meet him in person.

Feeding Dads

This week, one man welcoming a baby found himself in Twitter’s crosshairs when he jokingly (at least I assumed) suggested the birth rate would be improved by providing better accommodations to fathers during labor:

People did not take kindly to it:

Now, I could be completely wrong here, but I assumed this was a cheeky joke about how crappy the “dad bench” is, not a genuine suggestion that the birth rates have something to do with subpar accommodations for dads in L&D wings. And it really is subpar—my husband has severe insomnia and was fairly stressed out about his inability to sleep for three days straight, but had the good sense not to say much about it, let alone post it online. Unfortunately, this is just one of those things where the social norm means you have to shut up, even if you’re technically right.

The plot thickens. As it turns out, he was given two different benches, one of which was satisfactory and the other of which wasn’t. So really, he’s just asking for more distribution of the first type of bench:

All in all, I couldn’t help but imagine him in the recovery room while his wife holds the baby, deep in the trenches of being the Main Character. Either way, I feel like people got a little too offended over what was clearly a dad-joke style tweet, perhaps a bit tone deaf but not heinous. But let’s get back to the real important matters: plowing the fields.