Those are “wellness” farms! They cure mental illness of all kinds, LGBTQ+ illnesses, ADHD, depression, and no doubt epilepsy and anti-fascism too. Stalin’s forced-labor camps did the same. And it’s not slavery if you can live there for free is it?

Next up, AED junkies.

Fuck Zuck. And the Phillips Exeter horse he rode in on. This Rich Kid, Harvard College billionaire is not who I care to listen to for “elitism” advice. His orange-ass-kissing is pathetic and disgusting.

Right, but I wasn’t claiming that he wasn’t seeking to spread terror for his cause, assuming that these are the facts. I’m remarking on the fact that the “big” Trump supporter and a highly trained Green Beret wasn’t immediately branded a terrorist by the media just like the NO guy was, despite committing an act that was, as far as I can tell, an act of terrorism. Is it only “terrorism” if you’re motivated by some kind of religious belief, and specifically, some kind of Islamic group’s belief?

One thing I’m finding interesting: we’ve got the NO attack and this Trump/CT attack, happening in close temporal proximity and both hurting/killing innocents, but I’m only seeing the former labelled by the media as a “terrorist” attack. Could it, maybe, possibly, have something to do with the NO attacker potentially having an Islamic background? In contrast, a US military member, and a Trump supporter in particular, could never be awarded the “terrorist” badge by the press, “bomber” is the most he could hope to earn it seems.

Congrats to Buffalo, it sounds like things are looking up there.

In my area (WA state) there was a small-ish Xian church (the one-storey building was probably <2000 sq ft and cheaply built - the steeple-ish thing (w/o a bell of course) blew off in a windstorm once)) that shut down a year or two ago and was boarded-up. It’s been repurposed as a homeless shelter that specifically serves people with serious medical problems. The change has greatly improved the 'hood.

People here are arguing for the (gate-kept) community that Xian churches once offered in the US. By “gate-kept” I’m referring to the fact that Xian churches were, and are, open to only the “right kind” of people. I’m sympathetic to the need for community, and have even looked around locally for what’s on offer from Xian or Xian-aligned/compatible organizations, but haven’t found any that promote an ideology that isn’t based on superstition and that don’t demand that I defer in all things moral/ontological to a human power hierarchy within the church. One whose authority, such as it is, is based on “it’s in the Book”.

Hard pass on that. I’ll find my community through volunteering and possibly, one day, through fraternal orgs, though I’ve found the ones around here (Masons, Rotary, &etc) are still hardcore on gatekeeping themselves, despite being on the wane just as much as Xian churches are. If you think you’d be most comfortable in a Xian-churchy sort of context, but are politically and socially “liberal”, the UCC seems pretty inoffensive, though they still (at least locally here) carry on about “worshipping” invisible deities all the time. The Unitarian Universalists (uua.org) seem the least offensive of any old-timey church that I’ve encountered and it has a certain appeal to me for its association with New England and with 19th-century intellectuals like Emerson and Thoreau. The local UUs have had a local schism in the past five years, with the historical church taking a politically rightward lurch and another UU church spinning-off it but seemingly being more preoccupied with how their church is controlled (no more all-powerful pastor-types, only collective decision-making allowed) and less with charity and community. Finally we have Unity here (unity.org) which has potential for community, but where weekly service addendees seem to be almost exclusively elderly, so I wonder how much longer it will be a going concern?

I’m hoping that someday we get a Satanic Temple that meets in-person here. I could definitely see myself joining that. The Church of the Subgenius (https://www.subgenius.com/), praise “Bob”, would suit me well too, and I already own a copy of the Sacred Text, but they don’t meet in person AFAIK.

When our economy collapses due to the Musk/Trump “management” of it, then Musk/Trump/etc will need to start a hot war to put citizens to work and excuse vast new amounts of spending (financed with borrowing), mostly on the MIC. Just like Hitler did in the late 30s. Who the victim will be, I’ve no idea. The stupid little post-9/11 middle-eastern wars made MIC types richer but I don’t think they greatly affected the US economy otherwise. No, I think we’ll need a big war, against a fairly powerful opponent, to justify all of the “sacrifice” the domestic Poors are going to be asked to engage in. The opponent should be, ideally, a prime target for racial and cultural bigotry - a people that the Poors already think is gross. That’ll boost the enlistment rates among their young, who’ll be all too happy to sign up to murder whoever MAGA says is foul and hateable and responsible for the shit sandwiches that they’ve found on their plates. But will Musk/Trump try to take on a Russia or China or NK, opponents that might let fly with nukes? Wall St. won’t be keen on that I think, and the billionaires own MAGA now, but still there’ll be all those starving, diseased poors … how will we protect billionaire wealth while maximally leveraging the poors’ racism/bigotry and their desire to feel strong and important, to have a stage and to have at least a micro-MAGA-sized personal claim to glory?

Loser incels are so pathetic.

If this becomes law the charitable-giving industry is going to be slammed. Right now there are lots of ways that you, a donor, can give to your favorite causes via an intermediary, taking a current tax deduction for doing so but (possibly) having the intermediary pay out in the future (an endowment), possibly forever (if endowment growth exceeds charitable outflows). If all of a sudden a large chunk of the nonprofit space are deemed anti-Trump “terrorists” then these intermediaries (public and private foundations and donor-advised funds (DAFs) for example) will suddenly have far fewer recipients to write checks to, and may have no recipients at all in the case where funds are directed to just a few recipients or areas-of-interest by the terms of the donation. Oh sure, the money will be disposed of one way or another, but it might very well not be disposed of in the way the donor intended at the time of the donation, and might well end up being disposed of in a way the donor would never have agreed to. Tough luck donor, you took the tax write-off, you can’t get the donation $ back and you can’t have it disbursed to non-charities either.

These intermediaries, the foundations and charitable-fund managers, are themselves charities. Their job is to disburse donor funds to a myriad of charities more or less according to the wishes of their donors. So what happens when, say, Fidelity Charitable is deemed a “terrorist” org for sending donor money to the ACLU? If it’s stripped of its nonprofit status, it can no longer be a DAF manager, so what then? What happens to the donors and all the assets under management? I suppose there will need to be a follow-on bill that will compel the fund managers under such circumstances to cut checks to Trump and Trump-affiliated orgs (nonprofit or not). I read recently that the sum of DAF assets under management alone is around $250B (2023 numbers I think) so if a substantial amount of those funds are deemed “terrorist” funds, then it’ll be mighty tempting for “somebody”, somebody bad at business yet well-known for criminality to see about doing some confiscation.

Also, right now, if one is, say, a DAF donor, many of the managers (most?) allow you to make anonymous donations out of your account. But if you are (or were) having checks sent to newly disfavored (i.e. not regime-aligned) orgs, will the manager have to turn your name over to the government? After all, you’d then be a “terrorist” yourself wouldn’t you?

I could really see this decimating the charitable-giving industry. Charitable foundations and fund managers have got to be losing sleep over what these laws could entail. As a donor, unless I was already MAGA-aligned and really wanted that tax deduction, why would I bother with all this uncertainty and risk?

More info: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-urges-house-to-kill-bill-that-could-give-trump-admin-power-to-crush-dissent-and-go-after-political-enemies

The assault was one of at least 439 mass shootings in the U.S. this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that defines mass shootings as incidents involving four or more victims.

Ah, a @YourChildhoodRuined moment. Just great. :-(

New article with more details: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2024/oct/16/12-year-old-who-brought-loaded-handgun-to-school-t/ .

Court records say another student was skipping class and hanging out with JV near the stairs when she saw the barrel of a handgun inside his backpack. When she asked about it, he said he was holding it for someone.

The student criticized JV for bringing a gun to school and he responded, “If you snitch, I will pop you in your head the next time I see you,” records say.

Another student who was skipping class told police JV showed her the gun and asked her not to judge him. He said he had it because another student would be coming to the school, records say, but didn’t give any more details.

The semi-automatic, 45-caliber Springfield model handgun found in the backpack had bullets loaded in the magazine, but no round was yet chambered in the barrel.

I don’t understand what the word “certified” is supposed to mean in his rant. Is this some new teen-speak redefinition that he’s trying to appropriate? “power certified”? Huh?

“MAGA is eating out” - this is happening to the colleges in N. Idaho as well, possibly all of ID. Schools losing accreditation, admin and faculty bailing, students unable to xfer credits… a big shit-show that fucks over students but makes the local Fascists think that they’re “taking back education”. Got kids? Send 'em to FL or ID and they can get an unaccredited PhD in Ignorance Studies in a year or less.

At the scene, multiple people pulled over in a car and fired with at least one automatic weapon at one person before getting back into the vehicle and fleeing the scene, Birmingham Police Chief Scott Thurmond said in an update Sunday morning. More than 100 shell casings were collected at the scene, among other pieces of evidence, and bystanders were caught in the crossfire.

Thurmond said the shooting was not random and may have stemmed from an alleged murder-for-hire against an individual in the Five Points South entertainment district at the time. No one is in custody, but police are asking for businesses and witnesses to report any information they have.

City and police officials believe a switch — a small device that can convert a semi-automatic handgun into a fully automatic weapon — may have been used in the shooting.

https://wbhm.org/2024/birmingham-police-4-dead-dozens-injured-in-five-points-south-mass-shooting/

Spokaners do not drive across the border into Coeur d’Alene for cheaper groceries or a half-price Big Mac.

I actively boycott any and all ID businesses, because of the state’s shitty labor and reproductive-rights laws and its nurture of Christofascism. They can Gilead all they want but it won’t be with my financial support.

I haven’t bought anything via the Amazon site in years. At least three, possibly five or more. Anything I need I can get elsewhere either online or in person without supporting Amazon’s anti-union, worker-exploiting policies. I won’t even use AWS for business purposes because of how they treat their workers. Boycott away, there are plenty of Amazon options that are “good enough” if not actually better.

Ah yes, the fumes. That “Waste To Energy” incinerator is west of town in the area known as “West Plains”, near I90, near the airport, and not far from Fairchild AFB which these days is a locus of refueling operations and other support functions. Huge, 4-engined planes coming and going all day long. Long ago the AF firefighting ops polluted the groundwater there with PFAS chemicals and much of it is no longer fit to drink. Between that, the air pollution from military and civil air operations, and whatever comes out of the stacks at the W2E plant, I have to imagine the denizens of the area have evolved some powerful pollution-resistant genetics. Or maybe they just die young from cancer and respiratory and neurological diseases. Fortunately it’s a pretty low-income zone (think ‘typical military town’ - old skool Bremerton-ish) so all that disease can just be blamed on personal poor decision-making (like the decision to live there). A shame really, West Plains now has a ginormous Amazon warehouse that the residents could slave at (in addition to the super-Wally’s and the casinos) if they’d Just Say No to cancer and all those other tempting diseases.

Spokane burns its ordinary trash. It also accepts plastics and other “recyclables” at an every-other-week curbside pick-up, using a separate bin, just as you’d expect. Then they burn it. Yes, just like the trash. But wait, they do the burning at a facility they call the “Waste To Energy” plant, so that makes it all OK.

It’s all a big expensive greenwashing game, but everyone seems perfectly fine with it. La di da di da.