…and we’re back. Hope you’re having an ok week with [gestures wildly] everything going on…
FBI takes over case of ICE agent killing US woman and cuts Minnesota’s access to evidence
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/08/minneapolis-school-class-canceled-ice-killed-woman
House votes to renew ACA subsidies, as Senate Republicans rebuke Trump on Venezuela
https://www.npr.org/2026/01/08/nx-s1-5662625/house-vote-affordable-care-act-subsidies
Huge anti-government protests in Tehran and other Iranian cities, videos show
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg7y0579lp8o
NASA crew to make rare early return to Earth after medical issue in space
https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/08/science/nasa-astronauts-crew-11-return
Tennessee university reinstates professor fired for post criticizing Charlie Kirk
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/08/tennessee-university-professor-reinstated-charlie-kirk-post
Hang in there friends.
…would be emperor demands gladiatorial contest as headliner for birthday games in the old school bread & circuses comeback for the ages…first to three (decline &) falls wins?
…it’d be fucking hilarious if it wasn’t so goddamned tragic
…speaking of hilarious…but this time maybe without the tragic part?
You joke but last time I flew through LaGuardia, a man was having his bag searched over tubes of toothpaste.
The feds took over the Minnesota shooting investigation so Trump can pardon the murderer.
…&…like
…no part of that has been even the slightest bit subtle?
…indicting/impeaching noem seems like an idea with legs even if anything impeach-y seems to have the same achilles heel as jeffries mic dropping about extending the health care subsidies…senate says what?
…but
…now the portland thing, too?
…that seems to have involved the people that got shot trying to force their way out of having been blocked in by an ICE vehicle that followed them into…of all places…a hospital parking lot?
…it’s not even the quiet part…the official line from the administration is “we got you, homie – we just bigfoot your case & the pardon’s already in the mail…don’t even sweat it, we won’t let ’em have anything they could build a case on…keep doing what you doing”
…like they’re marcellus wallace telling sam jackson he’s sending the wolf
…between those two states’ statements from AGs & mayors & such & walz putting the national guard on notice to maybe gear up?
…not trying to sound like I’m getting gung ho about civil war parallels…but…numbers-wise…they can’t walk their talk at scale…& the US is…big
…& their arrest stats are dogshit
…that’s who they’re snatching…to incite scenarios where people die in the hope that civil unrest gets restless enough to give them excuses they’re trying to engineer
…but…all the bodies they can throw at that seem like the proverbial hill of beans beside the numbers that turned out for that no kings stuff
…& their shit is, in some pretty important ways, not actually working?
…like none of those people can hear that other shoe hitting its cushion on the drop
…& so on & so forth?
Okay, i’ve been hammering alllllll over bluesy on this, the last day & a half, but i’ma tell y’all, too;
YES, it sucks, and YES, it’s bullshit!!!
BUT, to seal a shitty TV trope, “The North REMEMBERS” y’all!
And we are NOT gonna let this case go.
Just like NY state has Tish James?
*WE* Have State AG Keith Ellison.
The guy who was AG through the Mohamed Noor case where the state FINALLY convicted our first cop for killing an unarmed person.
He was also AG for Kim Potter’s manslaughter of Daunte Wright.
AND, he was the lead on the cases that convicted Derek Chauvin & the rest of the officers with him that day, for the Murder of George Floyd.
Ellison began to protest MPD & Police Brutality, back wheb he was a student at the U of M, before he became a Lawyer, Congressman, or our AG!😉😁
And he’s ALREADY done a news conference asking folks to send their footage & any possible clues to him, so the State of Minnesota can eventually gather a case and put Renee Good’s murderer on trial.
And that whole “The North Remembers” thing?
That’s because it DID take us 26, nearly 27 years, to bring Jacob Wetterling’s murderer to Justice.
But we DID IT, *and* y’all Jacob’s case was ABSOLUTELY MADE by public effort!!!
Joy Baker’s started her blog, with the (iirc) “Jacob, where are you?” post, in 2010.
Folks saw the blog, and they started to talk, with others, and with Joy.
Eventually, enough pieces were put together, linking the attacks on boys our age in Paynesville, Rockford, & that area back in the 80’s, and enough men were willing to share their stories, that Joy was able to work with the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office, and they FINALLY busted Danny Heinrich.
Heinrich confessed to Jacob’s murder, led police to his body, and is in prison for the rest of his life.
We don’t *have* any time limit/statute of limitations for murder cases.
Once the state AG *has* a chargeable case, with enough evidence to convict?
The case WILL be brought in State Court, as long as Good’s killer is still alive.
As long as The Union holds, of course.
But if it does?
This is like the ducking Battle Flag of Virginia, and the First Minnesota at Gettysburg, y’all!!!
We *aren’t* gonna forget it–and we’re gonna drive ALL OF YOU nuts, with that fact!
*Especially* the celebration once enough evidence finally appears at trial to convict.
We’ll get there, we just have to go “The Long Way Around” on this one.
Thing is?
We’re dorks *from* the “real sticks.”
Plenty of us KNOW how to follow Turkey, Pheasant, and Deer Trails to get places through heavy woods (even *this* “city girl” can follow those deer & turkey tractors reliably!😉)…
So it *will* get followed until all the necessary evidence is there, and as long as that jackwagon is still alive, he’ll be tried, no matter HOW old he may be.
And I apologize for allllll the typos!😖😱
…apologise for nothing…that might be the most heartening thing I’ve read all day…maybe week…could be longer…what even is time these days?
…seriously though…if that ken white/popehat/fucking bitch hat thread about how hard those cases are was sobering…in the words of joni mitchell…I could drink a case of you, darling…& still I’d be on my feet
…the song doesn’t mention I’d be applauding so this is just so I can tell you that part?
Jesus Christ, this petty orange bitch will not. let. this. go.
Trump says he will meet Machado — and would accept Nobel Peace Prize from her
…saw an amusing idea that the nobel committee should rescind the award if it gets sub-let without their consent
…but…holy shit…to be living in a world where that resembles the bleeding edge of realpolitik pragmatism in the context of interacting with the united freaking states of america
…I…must be losing my mind…seriously…because I caught a stray train of thought that started with zaphod’s get-darker-the-more-dangerous-the-thing-you-don’t-want-to-see-in-front-of-you-is specs in those adams books…picked up steam somewhere around the AR/VR wearables x filter/overlay HUD functions border & steamed off down a runaway section off unfinished track where there definitely isn’t a bridge…imagining that there were wearable smart glasses with a built in function like the doomsday clock for nuclear war but using the “this is fine” meme imagery…so…in something akin to the black mirror/doctor who (depending on your levels of optimism) version of now the whole world is seeing little cartoon flames licking over everything everywhere they look
…fine…whatever…brains are weird…but…the part that worries me is what caught me by standing out as concerning was that I wound up wondering if…that might actually be quite handy to have saturated the market with a while back…&…that goes against the grain of my conscious feelings about most of the moving parts of the internally implied shit that gets you there?
…like…I am not ok with reality flirting with making it seem like maybe I think what would be *better* is to just build out the panopticon until it works on everyone so that the people trying to make it only work on not-them don’t get to get away with that
…if we’re going to do that…then we ought to be designing a *better* panopticon that you can appreciate because it’s not creepy & it doesn’t facilitate the shit you were hoping it would protect you from but it also doesn’t allow for shit that we can agree shouldn’t be allowed…&…you only have to *check* your tax return in case you disagree with it about something…& you don’t have to prove who you are to the state so you can demand it hold up its end…it reminds you that you’re due things you aren’t collecting on & gives you an attaboy if you say you’re good without
…fuck it…I should just take drugs…I sound like this anyway?
I agree with rescinding it. “Oh, you don’t want your Nobel? Okay, then, we’ll just take it back. Thanks for playing.”
Rip my friend, I was LITERALLY talking about the “tinfoil hat shit” with my therapist this morning, and explaining how *we* have SEEN Thiel, Yarvin, Vance, Miller, Vought, et. al “machinations behind the throne” and pulling levers ever since old moldy-wart brought down the Gawkerverse….
And I explained how “while it SUUUUUUCKS ass…” to see the whole world on the brink right now–as *you* guys know…
It *is* also kiiiiinda validating to see the folks who called us catastrophizing & worry worts & hyperbolic now *get* what we were trying to point out sooooo long ago.🤷♀️
At least, we *finally* are starting to get folks listening.
Folks are paying some attention (finally!), when we point out the Stochastic Terrorism, and that TrumpCo *is* trying to incite *someone* so he can suspend the Constitution Indefinitely &/or declare martial law.
Annnnnd, as long as folks like Gv. Waz, and AG Ellison *thread* the needle?
TrumpCo *can’t* do it!😈😈😈
Which means they get more & more reckless–like they did with that Alpha News release of the “shooter’s view”…
Forgetting that once *we* point out the links at Alpha News to Biased “Journaism”–since their “star reporter” Liz Collin is the spouse of 2020-era MPD Union Chief Bob “Is no longer allowed to Police in MN!” Kroll?
The credibility of Alpha News as “unbiased” like they’re pretending right now, is going to tank among reasonable people.
Yes, we are 100% operating with our tin-hat toquery!😉
But we *finally* have friends coming over to celebrate, too!🥳🥳🥳
There’s an episode of 30 Rock where they spray paint a cookie gold to be a trophy for either Jenna or Tracy because they’re so jealous of the other one getting an award.
This could be a strategy here???
…that substack effort that coined clicktatorship was pretty focused on the US…but…by way of some bananas for scale…the UK?
…the guy who basically said “I see your “providing the means to generate non-consensual sexual abuse imagery, including ‘of children'” accusation – & I raise you “only if you explicitly pay me for the service”…is the same fucknut facetiming tommy robinson rallies to encourage that fuckwit to say stuff like “I’d support russia invading britain to regime change kier”…&…despite saying maybe they ban the entire thing at the domain level for all UK ISPs or however that line was supposed to get enforced…damn near all the MPs & journos are all still on the fucking platform
…if they did…& I don’t think it’d be wise to hold my breath waiting…but if they did make it so it took more tech nous than most of those people have to see the thing that used to be twitter from the UK…& held that line for a couple of weeks…I strongly suspect that the explosion of road to damascus moments had by people who get quoted about stuff would radically overhaul the UK overton window beyond many people’s wildest imaginings
…several “serious” news institutions might have some equivalent of an existential identity crisis…& there’s a slim possibility that in fact it turns into some sort of snowballing apocalypse after which UN observers have to put boots on the ground to establish a baseline of political fact before the state collapses
…but…I’d be willing to roll the dice on that just to find out?
…related
…&…the kicker?
You show’em Cuck Shoemoor
If you need another reason to hate MMA…
https://calfkicker.com/mma-analyst-the-ufc-was-more-instrumental-in-getting-turmp-elected-than-virtually-anything-else/
yet an ex-wrestler is the voice of reason…
…one of the things that got a sports heathen like me to pay attention to the deadspin vertical in the kinjasphere was a fantastic piece they did on the guy in china the UFC lot fucked over & tried to force out of any potential revenue streams…basically he’s a moderately proficient MMA practitioner…not like a member of the gracie family or anything…just a dude who got into it
…but he became something of an online celebrity in that part of the world by challenging representatives of this that or the other school/style/tradition to one on one bouts & not reacting the ways all the students did when these “masters” put their mastery into practice…& there’s a fairly infinite supply of youtube videos on a similar premise from different places with different people…but…a bit like how it was a bigger deal than it tends to look to us that bruce lee took some of the students he did & taught them the sorts of stuff he tried to…the blend of lucrative scam/fraud stuff in that “space” & the…traditional, essentially…hardline gatekeeping strictness of the way that stuff evolved in that part of the world…& the extent to which all the way back to getting upset at being referred to as the sick man of asia/the east/orient or however that ran in a paper in shanghai whenever it did back in the day…the whole…mythos, I guess…about your real-life version of wong fei-hung in the kung-fu-robin-hood-with-a-side-of-doctor movie sense…kinda being ip man…the guy was out there on his own dime trying to…I dunno…go to places that claimed to be able to teach you how to be james bond & prove life isn’t the movies might almost work as a parallel for the brits…there’s probably a better analogy that would use the fast & the furious franchise for the US…or…you know…if I wasn’t a heathen…a ton of sports-based ones
…&…it…would appear to be broadly not much of a stretch to say that to get to the point where you could pull a bunch of jet li shit on a guy like him…or some serious contender, last name gracie…is beyond most of us…so…if you want to feel like you could avoid getting your ass kicked if you got in a fight with someone who meant it…the brazilian ju jitsu that predominates that sort of arena is dialled in pretty tight on the target audience because it’s “effective”
…very few people are doing that the way those gracie boys made it famous, though?
…back then I knew several people who took a pretty keen interest in that stuff…& off one axis of that bunch someone’s little brother got special dispensation to take a course you generally need to be in law enforcement to be eligible for in a jurisdiction that didn’t match their passport…& off another some of them started their own little school for eskrima…&…that’s why I know more than I’d like to about weird-looking shit with sharp edges
…but for a bunch of reasons that weren’t necessarily so different to theirs despite getting me to a very different set of conclusions about how to spend my time…they picked that one because most styles they ever heard of start with an empty hand & only teach you how to use weapons years later when you’re pretty nifty at the other thing…eskrima gives you sticks & moves into blades pretty quick…that…dovetailed with their “philosophy” the way “so you’re saying it’s about avoiding getting hurt while not letting them hurt you until if necessary you hurt them until they go off the whole idea entirely but I get to keep all my nerve endings & it’s good for your joints & maybe your quality of life when you’re old?” made me take up tai chi around that age rather than continue any of the other ones I tried out as a kid…& I’m nobody’s idea of an authority on how any of that works…but…some stuff about it has always looked the same to me…from cobra kai to angry white pajamas to any number of anecdata based examples…the ones who think a good night out ends with them taking out someone’s legs before pinning their arms to their sides in a prone position to straddle their chest & pound on their head until they go limp…or maybe break a limb if they have something special to celebrate…don’t want to learn the stuff that informs why all those traditions go with an empty hand to start…because that’s all about lesson #1 being “learn how to not be in a fight – much less a fight that might kill you”…& they *want* to be getting in fights?
…& I realise that seems overly simplistic to the point that this entire comment seems like a waste of everyone’s time on a par with what most of the MMA/UFC crowd are guilty of…but to me it’s of a piece with that business from yesterday about the Melian Dialogue & the athenians & the spartans & why thermopylae was a big deal that got a coda that can hang with the joint about ozymandius before it was the comic that made the movie that birthed a thousand memes…so…at the risk of it coming off flippant when I think that isn’t really the way I mean it…if I can find it…there’s a scene in a flick called ronin in which sean bean is pretty much an archetype of the sort of people I mean…& they appear to be most of the ICE “workforce”…so…if there were somehow a way to find a guy like the one that deadspin piece was about to dedicate a whole channel to non-stop examples of them getting knocked on their ass…&/or the fuck out…& none of that kit helping them do a thing about it…I probably wouldn’t be mad at whoever did that…but…failing that…I think this kind of thing might hit them harder than even mr “ain’t got time to bleed” talking that way?
…so…there’s maybe more clip than necessary to get the point across
…but…if I get over the uncanny valley effect of being fairly sure it’s he-re-ford rather than here-ford they’d be meaning to say, accent or not…iirc…in the movie the iffy irish accent is because they either are or are meant to think they are getting involved with “the cause” like the absurd antics those sons of anarchy got up to in the tv show with the lad who got famous in queer as folk but also did the green street one before he got the outlaw biker gig or the guy ritchie hook-up…&…*the terrorists*…would reject the ones ICE can’t hire enough of?
…in the end it was that kind of stuff that formed the thin end of the wedge that tipped me down the slippery slope until I wound up not even thinking it was weird to be reading blog posts by “sec def the rock” about the wrongheadedness of the bullshit bushido cult that births a pete “warfighter” hegseth
…well…okay…that & having family that were still alive after I was who spent time in the services across a timespan that included a world war…&…you know the bit in a clockwork orange where they pin his eyelids back so he can’t not-watch?
…I’d kinda like to be able to do that to hegseth & donald & miller & bannon & thiel & all those malignant cysts in human form…but with the art spiegelman graphic novel “maus”…because the day I showed that to my grandfather I learned more about that war & him than I did on all the other days of my life put together…so…I dunno…maybe it might make an impression
…either way it gives me the yips that you don’t even need a cup of coffee to ambush the US these days…& by extension the rest of the world…& it seems to speak poorly of us as a whole that what we aspire to is the form of mastery whose bottom line is…”once they’re down you pin them & just keep swinging at their face…domination, baby”
…either that’s about the worst look imaginable…or…you’re looking at it wrong…*even* if that’s what you think you’re about & I can buy that someone or something deserves that kind of “they’re going to need to wire your jaw shut after for as long as you probably ought to think about how you got here” lesson
…but…apparently seeing that requires access to some part of the light spectrum they don’t have the hardware for or something
…some fights either everyone loses or nobody has to…so if you get yourself in that rather than getting it thrust upon you…you to some extent lost that before you started…& that’s all MAGA has been about since it seems like forever
…& in this brave new world that has such wonders in’t…I can’t help involuntary waking dreams in which someone who looks a lot like samo hung knocks out face-gaitered gear-horses like a rocky training montage to a yakkety sax backing track
…so far at least I’ve resisted the temptation to commission one from an LLM
…maybe I should…maybe I could run it on a loop as a means of self-medicating myself to a state where all that wouldn’t be so viscerally abrasive when the media firehose sandblasts me with it on the daily?
P.S.
…did someone already post the one from this guy?
…because what used to MSNBC talked to that guy, if anyone wanted more where that came from
Some of the Gracie brothers were bouncers on Oahu when I was just out of high school. My friend was a bouncer with them and they would beat the shit out of a bunch of Samoan guys that couldn’t believe the bar hired such small bouncers. The place became a fight club and was eventually shut down. I did get to take pictures for an article on their Dojo (in a garage) and met one of them. I also used to babysit BJ Penn when he was a little kid. I like MMA when it first started but can’t stomach it any more. BJ has now completely lost his mind from all the beating he has taken…
https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2026/01/09/bj-penn-skips-court-ordered-mental-health-exam/
…so long ago that I only saw it because someone who sent off to have the…might even have been VHS…mailed to him played it for me…around the time a guy called igor vovchanchin (iirc) was the only real competition that family had in the rankings…mainly because he appeared to have had his pain receptors surgically removed to the point that it didn’t seem to matter if you pinned him & he couldn’t stop you smacking him in the head because your arms would get tired before he’d stop grinning about it…I saw footage of one of the brothers doing “casual” training on a beach somewhere…just him…no sparring partner…the way people work through katas & forms…dude reminded me of some sort of fakir who claimed to be a yoga rubber-man like reed richards without the stretching…tumbling about kicking up sand without ever getting to his feet but still covering ground like…I dunno…a double amputee that could breakdance…he got air time at points from just hands, elbows & knees…shit was more impressive than the time I saw a capoeira teacher bring a student down a few pegs after they tried somersault kicking their way into the circle at a grading*…& then he did some “breathing exercises”…one of those involved it looking a whole lot like he made all the soft bits below his ribs hide up in those until it looked like you could see his spine making bumps in line with his navel
…it’s amazing to me that these are things the human body is capable of…but I’m just about certain I have never once thought “that could be me if I just practiced enough” about people who call that sort of stuff exercise?
[* – …just because it left an impression on me…it was a different student I’d come to play friendly-face-in-the-crowd for but it was a sort-of-a-big-deal grading that day…the home office had sent a guy to kind of sign off on the teacher’s idea of a passing grade being legit…& he was a wiry little middle aged guy about a head shorter than the teacher & looking like half the mass…& all the students had to take two passes while the little guy & their teacher take turns being the other guy…so the flash kid thought he had his teacher coming in when he flipped in with the flourish…but the little guy tapped the teacher on the shoulder at that point like “can I cut in?” & he had seniority so it was always going to be a yes
…dude flipped from his feet to a headstand without using his hands…put those down…skidded on the top of his head to where the kid was toeing the line…stayed that way…then snaked one leg around the kid’s attempt to lead with a kick before sliding head first between their legs & putting them in a full-body leg-lock I couldn’t even understand how he’d done because maybe I blinked…released that & vaulted over the kid’s head to a ready position like it never happened…never said a word…& then proceeded like it was any of the other passes that day
…if I hadn’t seen it from about 4ft away I don’t think I’d believe any of that was remotely plausible, much less true?]
Yes, Jesse *is* occasionally right!
AND HE IS STILL AN EGOMANIACAL FUCKNUGGET WHO SET UP THE DOMINOES WHICH ALLOWED TIM PAWLENTY TO FUCK UP THE STATE BUDGET FOR YEAAAAAAARRRRRS!!!
Trust me, you do NOT want him back in the spotlight!!!
that is all, carry on.
And just adding these, because it ALWAYS cracks me up, to see how the sparkly necklace(s?) went from Jesse’s neck to his arms, depending on the videos!;
And for the purposes of full disclosure. Three-year old *me* had a MAD crush on Jesse and his sparkly jewelry, berets, and feather boas back then, and I thought he was *dreamy*!😆😂🤣🤣🤣🤣
Accidentally caught the same one twice, this should’ve been the second!
/eyeroll to Mark Chad and Jon/
No amount of situational awareness or not taking SSIs was going to save Renee from a traumatized fuckwit jamming a pistol into her car and shooting her in the head.
This is the kind of stupid shit from dumbfucks who think counting the number of shots fired and jumping the shooter when he’s reloading is a brilliant idea and something they’d do.
Men would rather join the Gestapo and murder a woman in broad daylight and on video than go to therapy.
See, they are not the same…
I’m sure this will end well…
https://www.euronews.com/2026/01/09/trump-says-us-to-start-now-hitting-land-in-mexico-targeting-drug-cartels
…they’re late…they already made folks play out all the “they’re doing sicario for a LARP” jokes
…but…yeah…that stuff is one of the reasons the people who were making those spent yesterday talking about how badly those might go loco in, say, acapulco…any american counts for the kinds of bloody example they think of as a go-to move the way the colombians got their own necktie…so…another genius take from the brains trust, that one
When’s the kinetic strike on Vivek’s campaign bus and his security guard’s house?
Seems a security guard for Vivek got busted dealing FENTANYL and Meth.
Huh. Guess they’re not paying the help. Seems pretty stupid when you’re utterly convinced that antifa is going to storm your campaign bus.
Dude is the winner of the bodyguard most likely to murder you and your family in your sleep during the apocalypse.
…might be too late to be worth putting these here but
…last one’s a thread… didn’t think it could get worse to me but it does