#ben collins

rise (GHOST IN THE SHELL) parody

And Hank's reaction is very interesting.

We have only just been introduced to him as someone who supposedly cannot stand androids. Yet Hank doesn't react to the implication at all. He doesn't say, "He's not mine," "I would never buy an android," or even, "What the hell are you talking about?"

He only answers, "Oh, very funny," and turns to look at Connor. Almost as though the joke landed a little closer to home than Hank would have liked. And the joke gets even better later, because Hank eventually starts using almost the exact same language himself. After Connor drags him into the shower, he complains that he's being "assaulted in his own home by his own fuckin' android." So apparently "you got yourself an android" stopped being quite so funny somewhere along the way.

Later, the game gives us another interesting detail. In Hank's bedroom, there is a magazine containing the article Tainted Love. It describes androids designed not only for sex, but for companionship: androids who can live with a person, take care of the home, and satisfy their emotional needs. These models were originally marketed mainly toward lonely people.

Of course, this doesn't prove that Hank was already standing outside a CyberLife store with his credit card ready. But the magazine is lying in the bedroom of an extremely lonely man. So the theory that Hank may at least have considered the possibility didn't come from nowhere.

Then we reach the Eden Club, and we begin to understand why he might have rejected the idea. Hank doesn't despise intimacy between humans and androids. What he despises is the way people use androids as convenient objects, as substitutes for real relationships in which they would have to respect another person’s desires, emotions, and boundaries.

The clients at the Eden Club are not looking for partners. They want objects that cannot say no, demand respect, or walk away.

And Hank cannot stand that. Because despite his loneliness, he does not want a toy. He wants someone who can genuinely return his feelings. This becomes especially clear after the encounter with the two Tracis. When Hank hears that one of them killed a man while trying to return to the person she loved, he doesn't mock the idea that androids can love each other. He accepts it almost immediately. Later, he says himself that they only wanted to be together and that they genuinely seemed to be in love.

So Hank's problem was never that an android could not be a real partner.

The problem was the absence of choice and mutuality.

Which makes Ben's joke even funnier in retrospect.

Because Hank really did, in a way, "get himself an android."

He just didn't buy him.

Connor was there because he wanted to be.

And I think there's one more thing worth mentioning here.

I don't really believe that an otherwise normal, empathetic person would suddenly become cruel to an android just because they knew it was technically a machine. If something looks human, talks to you, reacts to you, and seems vulnerable, empathy doesn't just switch off because you know there are components under the skin. Especially when you know that this being can't really fight back or protect itself from you.

You might know, rationally, that it's an android. But hurting something that looks and behaves like a person still requires you to ignore a very basic human response: I don't want to hurt this.

And I think that matters when we talk about people buying androids because they were lonely. Someone looking for companionship probably isn't looking for a target. They're looking for someone to have around. So to me, the disturbing part was never that humans could do whatever they wanted to androids.

So last year the little boy sat in the go kart told a story, about how his Dad has such blind faith in him as a kid and zero shame. So little shame he once confidently pointed to his son and another in that photograph and told someone from Autosport that these two will be in Formula 1 in the future so you should interview them now.

The boy in the kart? Anthony Davidson, former Formula 1 driver, Le Mans runner up and WEC World Champion.

The other boy that his Dad predicted would be in Formula 1? The boy stood up at the back in the red and blue. If you look carefully you might recognise that look. That boy is Jenson Button, 2009 Formula 1 World Champion.

Now the blonde boy sat on the front wheel would go on to win all the flagship events in US motorsport. Dan Wheldon, 3 time 24 hours of Daytona winner, Indy 500 winner and Indycar Champ. Had a freak accident in 2011 not taken him from us, I’ve no doubt those stats would be bigger, another Indy 500 win, maybe a NASCAR title. Hell the three of them may have had a stab at Le Mans together.

Between the three they won virtually a full set of all the elite titles even a non fan can name.

And the fourth little boy in the purple and blue looking like he is in a 90s catalogue? Well he became the most famous of them all. That’s Ben Collins. The Stig.

All I’m saying is currently Lando, George and Alex have a single F1 championship between them. They have a long way to go. 😂

If you are interested there is a video on YouTube of the Davidson/Button/Wheldon/Collins gang karting.

In this case the pairings are Cal (60) with Ben, Connor with Hank, and Enin (900) with Jeffrey~

Elyse Wanshel at HuffPost:

Revenge is a dish best served silly. MS NOW host Rachel Maddow was seriously tickled about how the satirical publication The Onion plans to get back at Alex Jones. On Monday, Ben Collins, chief executive at The Onion parent company Global Tetrahedron, announced that after nearly 17 months, his company has made a deal to run InfoWars. The Onion attempted to buy Jones’ website, which is riddled with bogus right-wing conspiracy theories — most consequentially Jones’ apparent belief that the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax — in 2024 as part of its bankruptcy plan. But that deal ended up in a messy legal battle. The plan for The Onion has always been to turn InfoWars into a parody of itself.

Maddow invited Collins onto MS NOW so he could share some of the parody website’s plans to mock and tarnish Jones’ legacy, assuming the deal to license the site is approved by a judge. [...]

A website created by The Onion to look like InfoWars shows ads that are meant to mock Jones’ MAGA base. It includes a kit that promises to “turn your piss into gold” and another that says it can turn “gold into piss”; a “Demon Guard” patch shaped as the cross that says it’ll provide 24-hour protection against “all dark entities”; and an ad that shows a man flying over a meadow of grass and reads “learn to float” and “discover the secret.”

For now, Jones continues to run InfoWars, and even if a judge approves the new deal, he still could appeal. Collins told Maddow that the most important part of The Onion acquiring InfoWars is that they get to take over Jones’ name and try to undo some of his damage.

On Monday’s edition of her MS NOW show, Rachel Maddow had a humorous segment on The Onion’s potential finalization of purchasing InfoWars.

From the 04.20.2026 edition of MS NOW's The Rachel Maddow Show: