Notices by M.S. Bellows, Jr. (msbellows@c.im), page 5

@YakyuNightOwl @TechBean
1. I saw her once, at a dude ranch in Ojai, California!
2. Fun fact: Beaver's brother (and co-heir) took his share of their inheritance and paid to have his consciousness stored for centuries then uploaded to an explorer robot, which unexpectedly saved mankind. Thanks, Ward and June!

These three CDC #COVID/respiratory infection maps are not at all alike, and that seems odd to me. (And yeah, it's easy to jump to the conclusion that RFK has rigged it, but I'm thinking there's bad data being collected or something. I'd love someone better at statistics to chime in.) Source: Respiratory Virus Activity Levels | Respiratory Illnesses | CDC https://share.google/yIG9xhcn97JrcEu5o

"An official website of the United States government."

Sigh.

@steter I agree with everything you're saying, except for your assertion that our nation's generals should act now, because what you're really talking about is a military overthrow followed by a military junta and a transition back to democracy over time. That's not what I want (at least, not yet).

I do want them to keep their heads down and not get fired, so that they're in place to resist unlawful orders, rather than except Hegseth's transparently manipulative invitation to nobly resign if they're offended (which would let Trump appoint their replacements before the real totalitarian occupation begins).

@steter In what way do you believe they should have acted last night?

@steter What did you expect them to do in the moment? What Trump and Hegseth hoped for was some expression of opposition, to identify who they need to fire. Every officer there denied them that opportunity.

I guess now we know whose comedy to never, ever, ever watch again: "The lineup features Dave Chappelle, Louis CK, Bill Burr, Kevin Hart, Whitney Cummings, Pete Davidson, Aziz Ansari and Jo Koy."
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/sep/30/riyadh-comedy-festival-saudi-arabia
c @conejoclint

On this calm, beautiful Saturday morning, the President of the United States illegally declared war on my peaceful city:

"At the request of Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, I am directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists. I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary. Thank you for your attention to this matter! 9/27/25, 7:19 AM"

Oh fzck you, The Oregonian. "This story was drafted with the assistance of generative AI based on data from Oregon State Police and reviewed by Oregonian editorial staff."
@TheOregonian @oregon-news-from-the-oregonian-TheOregonian

@mtlgazette @steter It's sort of reassuring to know that Canadian cops waste taxpayer money just like USian ones do.

"Six people were arrested after Quebec provincial police raided a commercial building in Repentigny on Friday night as part of an investigation into alcohol smuggling.... Officers seized several litres of beer, wine and spirits, along with more than $700 and a liquor dispenser."

This is a helpful and frightening perspective on why Americans have such different views of who Charlie Kirk was. Screenshot from FB; original poster's name is in the screenshot but I'm not typing it because she might not want it searchable outside FB:

"One thing that has become really clear since yesterday is that we live in at least two different realities. Talking to a friend who only knew Charlie as a Christian motivational speaker because that's all that ever came across her feed. Showed me videos I've never seen before of him saying perfectly reasonable and empowering things.

"I showed her videos she'd never seen before of his racism, misogyny, homophobia, advocating for violence against specific groups of people. She was horrified by his remarks about Pelosi's husband's attacker being bailed out and celebrated for his violent act. She was horrified by a number of things that he said, but she had never seen or heard them before, the same as I had never seen or heard the generalized clips of him sounding like a perfectly nice loving man and father.

"Neither of us had a whole picture of this man. I mentioned he was a known white supremacist and she thought I was joking. She talked about him giving a speech about finding your purpose and doing good in the world and I thought she was joking.

"I saw why this friend was mourning the loss of a person she thought was a good person. My friend, bless her, saw why I feel the way I do about him. We understood each other better. In spite of a multi-billion dollar internet machine specifically focused on keeping us apart. Because we talked to each other with the desire to listen and to learn rather than the desire to change someone else's mind or to be 'right'.

"None of those motivational things he said change my opinion about him because they don't erase the negativity, the subtle calls for violence, the belittling and denigrating of other races religions genders etc. His negative and blaming comments about homeless people, the poor, and victims of domestic violence. His comments about rounding up people who didn't think like him and putting them in camps where their behavior could be corrected. That time he said empathy was a made-up word he didn't believe in. That other time he said the Civil Rights Act was a mistake. The time he said most people are afraid when they get on a plane and see that there's a black pilot. His anti-vaccination rhetoric and his active campaigning against people being allowed to wear masks for their own health. His open support of fascism and white supremacy. To me, all of those are fully unchristian sentiments. Those are undeniable and just one of them would be a deal-breaker for me. All of them together are a picture of a man who was polarizing, enraged a lot of people and rightly so, but even with all of that I would never wish upon him or especially his children the end that he got.

"Oh, and my friend had never heard, and God help me I don't know how she escaped the news, but she had never heard of the Minnesota legislators who were shot in June. The husband and wife and dog who were killed, one after throwing themselves over their child to protect the child. The other couple who somehow survived. Politically motivated attacks specifically because they were democrats. She learned about those shootings that happened months ago because I showed her Charlie Kirk's comments about them. The kidnapping plot against a female Midwestern Democratic governor. The assassination attempt against Pennsylvania's democratic governor. All things Charlie had plenty to say about while supporting the Second Amendment and bashing the Democratic party. She didn't know about any of it because we're all living in two different worlds and none of us have the whole story."

@YakyuNightOwl Don't forget the great, iconoclastic Jim Bouton!

I can't believe George Packer's first response was to write this garbage:

"The activist’s murder is a disaster for the country.... In the long history of American political assassinations, Kirk belongs in the company of charismatic provocateurs such as Huey Long and Malcolm X, cut down before their time."
The Tragedy of Charlie Kirk’s Killing
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/09/charlie-kirk/684172/?gift=tkXqglDyeH5dBKankgeOxfEI9x1yqvYL9ZxOkzkzuZM

Trump: "[T]hose on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie [Kirk] to Nazis.... This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today."

Truth? The problem isn't that Charlie Kirk and those like him are *compared" to Nazis; it's that they *are* Nazis. Stop being Nazis and we'll stand down. Otherwise, don't act shocked to find it's D-Day, MFers.

"Democracy is a better idea than fascism, but the liberal international order does not exist because it is a better idea. It exists because the democratic powers built bigger and better guns, killed millions of fascists, overthrew fascist governments, tried and hanged fascist leaders, and liberated or coercively democratized former fascist countries.... The liberal international order rests on a founding act of violence, of which the Normandy campaign was a crucial part. It was justified, of course, because it was also an act of self-defense against the fascists’ attempts to found their preferred world order on the rest of us."
https://warontherocks.com/2018/06/why-visit-normandy-reflections-on-a-birthplace-of-the-liberal-international-order/

Image #1: photo of an ICE agent wearing a skull mask.

Image #2 (link below): 2021 article from the West Point Combating Terrorism Center titled "The Iron March Forum and the Evolution of the 'Skull Mask' Neo-Fascist Network," explaining that that mask is the established symbol of a white nationalist/fascist terrorist group.

They're not even trying to hide it now. https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-iron-march-forum-and-the-evolution-of-the-skull-mask-neo-fascist-network/
https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-iron-march-forum-and-the-evolution-of-the-skull-mask-neo-fascist-network/
^ @adamgreenfield

Trump is testing the deployment of troops in Black-led/Black-majority cities in preparation for the massive military occupations of Democratic strongholds that will be in place on Election Day 2026. And at the same time, he is trying to eliminate mail voting because it allows vulnerable populations to vote despite hostile occupation of polling places.

These urban troop deployments are the beginning of the theft of the midterm elections. Remember this. Keep the long view.

@Lazarou How long will it take for affiliates told not to air any footage of the US Open tennis crowd booing Trump to realize that means they can't snow the US Open at all, say screw it, and air a rerun of "Heidi" instead?

@50years_music Epstein's favorite song.

@derek I love it! You quote William O. Douglas's Supreme Court opinion about nature having legal standing somewhere in the book, I hope.