So they named the one death from the shooting the other day but the leftists are getting antsy something’s up that they’re not naming the resident (and running him as “a homeowner”)
After ventilating the traffic blockers with a .45 he was shot by a rifle (presumably an AR). Which means that some of the protestors were, in fact, armed, even organized into armed roles. And while “bringing a gun to confront some old lady leftists” sounds extreme, “bringing a gun to confront an organized, armed antigovernment band” might be more sympathetic even in Portland, and in the world beyond “the reason we have guns is to shoot pinkos if they try to take over the neighborhood” is a pretty basic rightist theme.
So my guess at how this gets used in the current Portland environment is it gets used to power an effort against armed political activity. When you march around with guns to claim the streets for cursing the established order people who live established lives along those streets take it as a hostile act against them and resist you – with guns – and people end up shot.
This’ll also get spun as usable against rightist “chuds”, the establishment saying “actually no you don’t protect you, we protect you”.
The left will of course be split by the triune possibilities:
People who insist on maintaining armed operations – I know exactly who’s gonna end up on this side, it’s “investigative journalist” Robert Evans. The thing is, 2 years on and reduced from the 2020 Justice Center protests only to the most hardcore lifestylers, after 2 years of the public opinion pendulum being pushed back to “order”, if you insist on showily mounting armed radical displays as a thumb in the eye that’s on you, they don’t even have to use “less-lethal” tools against you
Continuing compliantly unarmed, in an environment where being armed has been established as insufficient to ward off lethal attacks. The Indian independence movement and mid-20th century American racial “civil rights movement” employed strategies of nonviolent resistance that accepted some casualties would be taken unavenged. I think this required broad support bases drawing on wrap-around communities of distinct identities with high morale and a reasonable expectation of eventual triumph, and do not expect that can be replicated here
Seeking police protection, turning to permitted marches and events and operating within government constraints whose permissibility is determined within a formal and nominally precedent-bound system of law
He thinks the new vibe shift could be the return of early-aughts indie sleaze. “American Apparel, flash photography at parties, and messy hair and messy makeup,” he riffs, plus a return to a more fragmented culture. “People going off in a lot of different directions because it doesn’t feel like there’s a coherent, singular vision for music or fashion.” He sees Substacks and podcasts as the new blogs and a move away from Silicon Valley’s interest in optimizing workflow, “which is just so anti-decadence.” Most promisingly, he predicts a return of irony.
Catholicism is like the contested borderlands in leftie twitblr religion discourse. I’ve noticed over the years the has been a shifting ‘mood’ between either seeing Catholicism as the most sympathetic Christian denomination or the most evil one
I wouldn’t dislike tiktok/tumblr witchy types so much if they didn’t cop an attitude with literally everyone who wasn’t a “witch.” All of these fearmongering posts warning “baby witches” about shadow work and spooky spirits and fae coming to get you if you don’t use This Totally Real Protective Sigil reeks of a lingering U.S. Christian upbringing. The number of adults who started their practice by reading a “book of witchcraft” they bought on Amazon and now act like they’re privy to all the secrets of the universe is embarrassing. You are not the first person to do shrooms and light enough patchouli incense to mummify a bird in mid-air. Do y'all remember when some teenagers on tiktok “hexed the moon” as a joke, and thousands of fully-grown adults threw tantrums for the next month about “insulting Artemis?” Absolutely Protestant behavior on display there. Calm down and acknowledge that you’re a human being and not a magical mystical empath starseed, it’s not that serious.
Anyway, baby witches, I think you should perform as many dangerous spells as possible with zero protective measures taken and post them to tiktok, because it’s very funny.
Oh! On top of everything in my after-everything-life-is-suddenly-great moment, there’s the way where I’m now apparently the fought-over territory in a national politics organized into two parties one of which is earnestly trying to prove their rule compatible with my every dream with no downside and the other offering to tear the first one’s throats out if they step out of line. Like, not even just in an election!
the “feminine urge” meme set us back 9 million years. people just unironically posting shit like ‘the feminine urge to do the dishes and submit to my man. and have no financial independence and have glass bones and paper skin-’ like girl oh my godddd take it to the christianmingle dms stop making me read this corny shit out in the open
screaming and crying at people accusing me of making this up as if i’m gonna gain anything on tumblr dot edu besides anon hate and call out posts. now we all gotta suffer
these are the TOP “feminine urge” posts on one of the biggest social media sites right now. that then get reposted to all the others. some of these have a MILLION likes. WE don’t even have a million active tumblr users. YOU THINK ID MAKE THIS UP? FOR WHAT? FOR WHAT?
Ohhhhhhhh I see where the confusion is coming from. TikTok users aren’t people
Mentioned I was bi to a girl and she gushed that her boyfriend was bi too in a way that I kinda suspect was angling for me to proposition them for a threesome, so my “the ‘20s will be for bi men what the '90s were for bi women” prediction going well so far
Oh, now that I’m back to mental baseline, no, it wasn’t mania or COVID-brain, it’s just with my usual farseeing that I’m pleased to see the 2010s culture war is settled. A few years of mopping up but the result isn’t in question and the neat thing is I or the good guys aren’t even gonna have to do it, it’s the turn of the ones who indulged them so long to bear the burden.
The smartphone app Replika lets users
create chatbots, powered by machine learning, that can carry on
almost-coherent text conversations. Technically, the chatbots can serve
as something approximating a friend or mentor, but the app’s breakout
success has resulted from letting users create on-demand romantic and
sexual partners — a vaguely dystopian feature that’s inspired an endlessseriesofprovocativeheadlines.
Replika
has also picked up a significant following on Reddit, where members
post interactions with chatbots created on the app. A grisly trend has
emerged there: users who create AI partners, act abusively toward them,
and post the toxic interactions online.
So, let’s check in on the American left, see what they’re up to, ohh, “Loudly making an annoyance of themselves while insisting that if the Democrats don’t make some unprecedented changes the establishment isn’t too hot about, they won’t go on to rebuild national politics around themselves.” Bold move, Cotton, let’s see how it works out for them.
Friendly reminder my overall guidance this whole time was you should hold on defense in the trench until their wave breaks and it’s time for the counterattack and friends,
Like, I’ve been thumping on about this but if my main theme here is culture in historical context I can’t emphasize enough that the American zeitgeist’s reversals of the past few years were both inevitable – the stuff that has to happen – and absurd – the stuff that just doesn’t happen
It’s like the COVID stuff was designed to abrade off Democrats whose loyalty to the team is weaker than their loyalty to expert-class moralizing safetyism, it’s perfect, unreal
