Who the frick is K.W. Miller? That’s a great question. Honestly, it probably doesn’t really matter, but I need to write a post about something, and I’m not ready to jump back into Covid19 related stuff yet, so I’m going to write about K.W. Miller.
This fella is running for congress in Florida, and he’s decided to drum up P.R. for himself in a bizarre manner. This P.R. mainly entails throwing out conspiracy theories and making thinly veiled threats towards people via telling them they’re “on notice”. He seems to be employing the brash Trump-esque method of political self-promotion. It’s part politics, part WWE theatrics.
I guess he mainly went unnoticed on twitter until he finally penned his first platinum tweet:
If you’re getting poor traction on twitter, and you’ve exhausted all other measures, going full Alex Jones always seems to do the trick.
I think this is the tweet where he realized that if he’s going to get noticed on twitter, talking about actual policy probably isn’t the way to go. Throw out some saucy tweets about Deep State™ agendas and globalists, and all of a sudden you’re getting retweeted thousands of times. This is how U.S. politics currently works though. Pandering and sensationalism ultimately win out over boring political talk.
I tried to come at this article by grouping his ridiculous tweets into some sort of logical organization, but they’re completely all over the place. His account is almost run exactly like a meme or parody account. This even became a running joke at one point with Tim Heidecker of Tim And Eric™ claiming he was the one behind the account:
The account is currently still up, though K.W. seems to occasionally wipe all his tweets and start fresh with a new batch of ridiculous material. The following tweets are all deleted now as of mid-July, so these are all rare tweets, and might fetch decent money on the tweet black market.
Here are some of his views on masks:
Putting people “on notice” has become his trademark of sorts:
Then the Great Bean Wars™ of 2020 transpired, wherein a company held the wrong political views, and adults suddenly turned into babies. The tribalist idiocy of politicizing inanimate objects to own the other political team returned with a vengeance, not seen since the Keurig Wars™ of 2017 and the Nike Wars™ of both 2018 and 2019. Mr Miller was quick to capitalize on and take part in this stupidity:
He’s also fond of drinking coffee and making the same gender joke over and over:
He randomly spouts off about all sorts of completely unrelated things, often in the same day, mere hours apart. He even calls Florida “the greatest hell scape known to mankind” in one of his tweets, which is an interesting take for someone attempting to win an election there:
It seems like this was his biggest tweet at the time:
The above is a play on this facebook post from 2015 that spawned a bunch of other internet memes, so despite being in his mid-50’s, K.W. Miller is at least slightly in touch with meme culture it seems:
Maybe he’s playing a bit of a character, or is potentially more self-aware than a lot of people seem to be giving him credit for. If so, he’s more than likely tanking his chances of actually winning his election because he keeps going a little to far with certain tweets and receiving backlash. He got heat for this one, and wiped a lot of his tweets shortly after:
Well that’s a hell of a take. He’s probably already taken too much bad P.R. from his twitter shenanigans to stand a chance of winning his election in November, but it is Florida we’re talking about, so maybe he stands a chance.
You might have read that title and asked yourself: “Who the hell is David Garrick?” Exactly. Who the hell is David Garrick?
The David Garrick of consequence was an actor and playwright from the 18th century. The David Garrick I’m writing about is some goofball who reviews music, despite barely being able to write, and seemingly not understanding how reviews are supposed to work.
I chanced upon this fellow because I got nostalgic for the sweet tunes of late-90’s Turbonegro, after listening to a Ramones song that reminded me of a Turbonegro song, because Turbonegro often referenced their influences on their albums, including the Ramones, whom they were influenced by. Nice.
It was then that I decided to do a good old Google™ search to see what Turbonegro has been up to these last few years. Imagine my shock when the 4th result that showed up on Google™ was an article titled “Is Turbonegro Racist or Completely Clueless” on a website called Houston Press. The article is from 2018, but I’m perfectly fine writing a critique 2 years after the fact.
Mr Garrick evidently writes music “reviews” for this site, but literally nothing he writes even remotely passes as a review.
He wrote a “review” for a band called Grand Old Grizzly that is 215 words long, consists of 4 paragraphs, and just throws out a few adjectives to describe a few songs. This post is already 241 words long as of here, and this is just some bullshit I’m writing to entertain myself and perhaps anyone else who happens to chance across it. I’m not getting paid to write this, nor do I have the gall to declare myself a “music writer”, despite the fact that I’m currently writing about music with this very post.
The Turbonegro “review” also doesn’t quite meet the requirements to be considered a review. Though to be fair, maybe he doesn’t consider his aimless ramblings reviews, so much as a loose assortment of words meant to meet some sort of word count quota.
Here is his third paragraph:
When it was announced that the band had a new record called ROCKNROLL MACHINE coming via Burger Records, I thought, who cares? I mean, the band is on singer number four and their sound is typically for people who live in the past. When was the last time you heard someone under 30 talk about Turbonegro? Not having relevance in the music world has seemed to be this band’s forte.
Phenomenal way to start off a review of an album.
“Hey guys, who even cares about this band? Only losers listen to this type of music. I really couldn’t care less about this band, yet for some reason I’ve decided to spend the time and effort on writing a review about their latest album.” -David
This is really doing a great job of qualifying yourself as an objective voice for the ensuing review.
He then proceeds to spend the next five paragraphs complaining about a single line from a single song, before ending the review. Yes, he literally reviews one line from one song on an album of eleven tracks, then calls it a day. Great work. Very informative. Quality writing.
In the offending track, the line “I’m cheaper than a Mexican” is used, which had the following effect on our intrepid reviewer:
…which threw me for a loop. I listened and re-listened to make sure I was hearing it correctly, because as a journalist, you don’t wanna’ call out anyone and be incorrect.
Evidently he’s a “journalist” now, and doesn’t wanna “call out anyone and be incorrect”, despite the fact that he wrote an entire article about a band he doesn’t even care for, predicated solely on the premise that the band is racist because of one line from one song. Even then, he got that part wrong.
The band released a statement clarifying that the album is about a reactionary, bigoted cyborg “bragging about how he is going to take over the world and destroy the job market”. Kind of a goofy premise for an album, but the lyric in question suddenly makes more sense in that context. Seems like someone reviewing an album would have been a little better at actually listening to the lyrics before writing a screed condemning the band.
Perhaps David didn’t even care to listen to the whole album. Perhaps he stopped after hearing the word “Mexican” three songs in, so he could devise the best way to go on a self-righteous crusade to smear the band and feel a sense of superiority. Based on the following lines from his “review”, I feel that perhaps this is the case:
…how does this type of trash find a label to release their records?
The truth is, it’s not funny. No matter who you are, or who you’re trying to reach, the lyrics are racist, especially when sung by a white man.
There’s zero excuse for these lyrics being out in the world
As it stands, this kind of racist garbage needs to exit music sooner than later, or bands like this can exist on the websites of White nationalist groups, but not on any streaming site or digital storefront.
In this time, with this president who seems hell bent on dividing us, maybe this kind of garbage has a home, somewhere.
Yes, a grown-ass adult human man wrote all this in an article “reviewing” an album he seemingly didn’t even bother listening to all the way through. This article is from 2018, but in 2020, this gentleman would appropriately be referred to as a “Karen”. He even asked to speak to the band’s “manager” as it were:
We reached out to Burger Records as to why they’d release an album with such blatantly racist lyrics..
Things have been slow in the Covid realm, so I’m gonna take a quick detour. Anthony Fantano, “The Internet’s busiest music nerd” has dropped yet another stupid take on twitter. I say another, because the guy consistently says stupid stuff on twitter. He says stupid stuff because he desperately wants to be famous and taken seriously, and not relegated to merely a music reviewer on the internet.
Its no different than when someone who has a viewer base solely from something like acting or music decides to start sharting their opinions out on topics they know little about all over social media. It’s a symptom of arrogance. I have a lot of online followers, therefore I must be intelligent and enlightened on all matters, even those I literally know nothing about. Therefore I must chime in on absolutely everything, all the time.
So, he chimed in and gave his melon-headed opinion on “cancel culture” recently.
Why is this an astronomically stupid take? Because when most people refer to cancel culture, they are referring to the toxic act wherein people attempt to ruin other people’s careers or even lives over things as simple as mere disagreements.
When people make these terrible sweeping generalizations that “only bad people get cancelled”, they’re being dense at best and disingenuous at worst. This isn’t just about people reacting to other people being shitheads. This post is me reacting to someone being a shithead. This post isn’t a representation of cancel culture. I’m not trying to hurt Fantano’s career or finances. I’m not trying to incite mob justice against him. I’m just expressing my opinion about him.
People regularly get doxxed (the illegal posting of personal information), simply because someone else disagrees with them online. People rat on their co-workers and try to get them fired simply because they disagree with them. People project lies into the public sphere, that often result in lives being turned upside down.
Anyone heard of Johnny Depp? He’s this guy whose last wife made up lies about abuse that were spread via publications and social media. Despite the fact that there was no credible evidence of abuse other than allegations, Depp’s image and career were impacted. Everyone was bandwagon hating on this guy for months. The Harry Potter cult even spearheaded petitions to get him removed from a Fantastic Beasts film.
Turns out, his ex-wife Amber Heard was the abuser, being caught on audio recordings stating as much. Whoopsie! She also attacked him on one instance that almost resulted in him losing part of a finger. So all those people jumping to conclusions and clamoring for mob justice were wrong? The mob isn’t always right? Who would have figured?
This is what people who complain about cancel culture are fighting against. This isn’t simply about individuals being held accountable for things they say or do. They’re against this unthinking mob justice wherein people who should probably mind their own business feel the need to interject themselves into conflicts that don’t involve them. They are obsessed with feeling like the judge, jury and executioner. It gives them purpose.
The people engaging in this behavior don’t always do their due diligence to make sure they have the right person. They’re not particularly concerned with the ethics behind what they do, and sometimes just engage in this behavior for personal gain. Putting someone on blast on social media nets you a lot more “likes” than simply confronting that person one-on-one. Internet likes are worth more than another person’s well-being to many an online narcissist.
This isn’t a harmless endeavor. Numerous people have been bullied into suicide by this “culture”. Countless people have been wrongly accused of things they didn’t do. At its worst, it often devolves into a type of witch-hunt.
This dipshit recently used her platform as a game designer to direct her mob of followers after someone involved in a hit-and-run. Problem was, the person she accused of the crime wasn’t even involved:
Turns out it wasn’t a “white supremacist”, but some random black dude in the car, who was later arrested.
This isn’t the first time she’s been a horrible person online either. This is a pattern of behavior and not just a one-time thing. She never faces repercussions, and never learns her lesson. She’ll continue to behave like this because it draws traffic to her account. She just locks her account when inevitable backlash comes her way, then goes back to being an asshole when the coast is clear.
This is why random people with an online presence shouldn’t attempt to be detectives. Leave this kind of thing to the people who are actually trained to do this. The empty online validation isn’t worth the life you may put in harms way to obtain it.
Which brings us back to Anthony Fantano. His tweet above is especially stupid because he himself was a victim of this cancel culture.
In late 2017, the publication The Fader produced a hit-piece accusing Fantano of being alt-right. Alt-right is a cutesy euphemism publications and pundits use to legally skirt calling someone a Nazi. Richard Spencer is alt-right. Anthony Fantano is just a run-of-the-mill leftist. He also has a black wife, which in a non-stupid world should probably discredit him from being alt-right, aka a Nazi, aka a white supremacist. We live in Stupid World™ though, so inconvenient facts don’t matter.
He was accused of being alt-right because he had a second YouTube channel called “thatistheplan” wherein he posted meme videos. Anyone with a functioning brain would have seen these videos and realized they were just comedic meme videos. But because he had Pepe The Frog™ in a video or two, obviously he must be alt-right. You can click here to read what I wrote back in 2016 about the idiocy surrounding Pepe being deemed racist, if you’re in the dark on this subject.
Why would Fader publish such a blatant hit-piece? The writer was new, and this was his first published article for the publication. Online media thrives on click-throughs and ad revenue. A hit piece on a famous person will definitely rack up the numbers and make a name for some budding young nobody journalist. That article blew up at the time and led to negative repercussions for the music nerd.
So given all this, you would think Fantano would be fairly well-versed on the dangers of cancel culture. You would think that since he had once been a target and dealt with the negative effects, he would be against “cancel culture”. Well, you would be wrong. Here is how he handled people calling him out for his hypocrisy:
That is him calling people “bitch boys” for pointing out it’s somewhat hypocritical for him to downplay cancel culture as merely a reaction to people being shitheads. The guy literally had to cancel a tour over a hit-piece and the ensuing backlash. He had to do damage control in the wake of the article to clear his name. Even Vince Staples called him out for being “alt-right”, which no doubt had an effect on him:
This exchange was eventually deleted off twitter, but the internet never forgets.
As news spread of the previously cancelled Fantano seemingly cheer-leading for the very thing that cancelled him almost 3 years ago, Paul Joseph Watson joined the fray:
Paul Joseph Watson then proceeded to pivot to insulting Fantano’s looks and saying his wife is ugly, because Paul is a dickhead. The above exchange however, is one of the few times Mr Watson has actually had a good point.
Anthony proceeds to dig the hole deeper:
Rodrigo, aka the guy who called Fantano a “bald retard” makes a good point. Anthony seems to be making the case that his cancellation was no big deal because he simply had to lawyer up to get his life back in order. Ok then. Also, cancel culture is somehow a product of capitalism (what?), and capitalism is to blame for everyone not being able to lawyer up over a false accusation and cancellation. There’s some serious mega-brain logic going on here.
He also responded to someone posting a Pepe meme with this:
As we already established above, he was called alt-right 3 years ago in an article for having cartoon frogs in a video he put up. So is he being disingenuous here, or is he admitting that he was alt-right three years ago when he posted those “frog memes” on his YouTube channel? I’m gonna put my money on disingenuous.
It might just be that he posts this stuff for validation. His original tweet ended up getting 25k likes. Getting that much validation is probably a factor in someone deliberately downplaying something that personally affected them. He’s not the only person who lends credence to this theory. There are a lot of people claiming cancel culture doesn’t exist, who were singing a different tunes earlier on:
Interesting. The thing that doesn’t exist, existed when you tweeted about it numerous other times, all of which are searchable on your twitter page.
Cancel culture is a myth guys! I was guilty of engaging in it a mere 5 months ago, but suddenly it doesn’t exist now. It’s a miracle guys! Cancel culture stopped existing once I simply denied it!
This kind of seems like people saying something they don’t truly believe, knowing that they’ll receive positive feedback for doing so, doesn’t it? Look at all those likes for saying something that completely contradicts what they said just months earlier. The people liking these tweets are now probably going around regurgitating these same horrendous takes, because “they must be valid points if they got all those likes”.
This got a lot of likes too though:
It seems there’s a lot of bad actors out there willing to toe a line for online validation. It’s cool though. These people will miraculously start believing in cancel culture again the second they end up in the cross-hairs. Then they’ll use their platforms to cry about how life isn’t fair, and how they’re a victim. When that happens, someone like me will be ready to supply receipts and call them out for being weaselly little turds. It’s the least we can do.
Covid19 is powering back up. The last month of it not being taken seriously has really rustled its jimmies, whatever the hell that even means. Some states are slowly starting to close things back down:
Quarantine: Phase 2 might just be around the corner.
A few of the “red” states are starting to institute basic closures, limitations, and mask requirements, and the citizenry aren’t taking it all that well. Texas has finally issued a mask requirement while in public, and the conspiracy theories are pouring out of the woodwork.
Evidently it’s a liberal position to believe that masks can control the virus, at least according to Val🌴🤠🐚Life’sabeach over here. She should probably stay away from the beaches for a minute if she doesn’t want to end up contracting the ‘rona. This is of course assuming she even believes it actually exists and isn’t just an elaborate government mind-control conspiracy.
A lot of the conspiracy theories surrounding Covid19 are quite ridiculous. Most tend to revolve around the government using it to control us. There are others who claim that masks are actually harmful and cause “carbon dioxide toxicity”, despite a large portion of the medical industry wearing masks all day and being just fine. They commonly believe that masks don’t work, often citing those early tweets from health officials that in fact said masks don’t work:
It’s here that I have to point out for the 7th time, that the “experts” really screwed up royally around February and March. We’re still dealing with the repercussions of this. Masks have literally always worked to varying degrees, but because of tweets like those above, swaths of people think that masks don’t work, hence the conspiracy theories about this being a control issue.
Something else that really clouds the Covid19 discussions, is that people tend to solely focus on either the numbers of cases, or number of deaths. Both are relevant stats. Number of cases can go up merely from increased testing. Plenty of people have Covid19 and are asymptomatic. It’s hard to get good data on where we are because people who want to over sell, or under sell the virus tend to focus on whatever stat fits that narrative.
Tony ain’t gonna wear no mask. I thought this was America. The founding fathers didn’t sign the Constitution so that I gotta wear a mask.
😢 CHAZ Update 😢
Hey guys. I don’t know how to break this to you… uh… The CHAZ aka the CHOP isn’t with us any more. It finally got shut down due to it being a phenomenally dangerous shit hole and all. There was one more murder and one wounding right before it shut down, bringing the number of shootings to four.
Rest in piece the CHAZ aka the CHOP. You will always be remembered for your pizza parties and scuffed attempts at gardening. Too bad the power-hungry Che Guevara LARPers had to start running around with guns shooting things and doing ironically fascist things. Maybe next time some trained, accountable (hopefully) group of people can handle security. We’ll call them “the pulice” or something like that.
Oh yea. Here’s some weirdo Seattle voted into the city council with an astronomically bad take on the tragedy at the CHAZ aka the CHOP:
Yes. She’s blaming “capitalism” for two shootings at the hands of designated armed security within CHAZ. Security that I would assume Raz Simone installed (he was handing out guns a few days earlier), who shot up a car two teenage kids were joyriding around in. This was a completely CHAZ related incident. Based on her profile, she appears to be nothing more than an anti-capitalist grifter, so actually, this make perfect sense. The last few years have been an absolute boon for grifters.
☠CCP Update â˜
China has found itself back in the news recently. It turns out all those Uyghurs they rounded up and put in “re-education” camps are also being systematically sterilized to control their population.
There was another government who once put people into concentration camps and practiced eugenics. I can’t quite remember which one it was to save mein life. Oh well. Maybe it’ll come to me later on.
China did something else completely, totally, non-fascist lately. They penned a “National Security Law” that criminalizes anyone who speaks out about the politics surrounding Hong Kong and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This means all the free Hong Kong protestors are now subject to imprisonment, merely for protesting, and the penalty can be a prison sentence of up to forever. Sounds reasonable.
China is out here taking draconian measures to unforeseen new heights. If you’ve ever expressed any pro-Hong Kong sentiment on your social media, you should probably just go ahead and cross China off your list of vacation spots. There’s no telling what type of gulag or camp you could end up in if they’re maintaining some sort of database of dissent.
It seems they’ve already started snatching people up over there:
Wait just a minute. What is that? Computer… enhance.
What a curious account. No picture of any sort. Lets take a closer look at that profile.
Hmmmm. Interesting. This account only has 1 tweet, yet it was created five months ago. That certainly seems suspicious. It doesn’t quite seems like the account of an actual person. Lets see the 3 people who liked that “Well done, They deserved” tweet:
Interesting. Computer… enhance.
Two more iffy accounts. The first has no tweets, no followers and is following nobody, yet it somehow found and liked minfengxu’s “Well done, They deserved” tweet. I don’t need to state how suspicious that is. The other account has been around since 2016, but has only tweeted 4 times? Probably not a bot account, but perhaps a wumao account.
Wumao are people online who are paid by the Chinese government (CCP) to spread propaganda, or to like pro-CCP posts and dislike anti-CCP posts. I’d be open to the idea that this is just a conspiracy theory, if not for they fact that these accounts are literally everywhere and often not very convincing.
This account also commented on the Wall Street Journal tweet above:
Yes, “great jobs” indeed, real actual human being. Let’s look at those likes. Computer.. enhance.
Two of the same accounts who liked the last tweet, plus a new one. Let’s look at one more account that commented on that Wall Street Journal tweet:
Similar to “great jobs” from above, but this time with decent grammar. Let’s look at those likes, shall we? Computer… enhance. *beep beep boop boop beep*
Yes, it’s the same 3 accounts that liked the last tweet, and yes I copied and posted a separate screen capture for each list instead of just reusing the same image from above.
Here’s the accounts from the last two posters:
The dog account now has zero followers a day after I took this screenshot. That seems completely natural.
I’m gonna end this here. I could keep this going until the end of time, but you get the point of the massive tangent I just went off on. There’s tons of propaganda accounts all over twitter, liking and posting on all sorts of political tweets, mainly from news agencies. I do find it kind of funny that so much was made of Russian meddling on facebook, yet twitter is flooded with these types of accounts and they don’t seem to be concerned about it in the least. What if..
I fixed the images on the last 6 months of posts. In the last version of WordPress, images were automatically set to enlarge when clicked. In the current version, you have to manually do this for each picture via time consuming unnecessary steps. Now you can enlarge those twitter post images and read all that small print. You’re welcome.
Covid19 is making its triumphant return, and the media can’t decide whether it wants to do actual journalism, or tow agendas. Let’s take a look.
So, was Covid19 spread among people at the various protests? That wouldn’t seem to be the case according to these two outlets:
Both are deliberately misleading headlines. Based on the replies under these tweets, people seem to be of the mind that the virus was not spread at these events. They evidently didn’t bother to read the article. This is an excerpt from the BuzzFeed article:
The protests themselves have resulted in an increased spread of Covid19. The overall numbers haven’t jumped as high as expected because during the protests, non-protesters overwhelmingly stayed home. Essentially, there were less people out and about, so the infection rate wasn’t as high as if everybody who would normally be outside, was outside. Both articles also should have included a “yet” in their titles.
California has tripled its daily Covid19 cases since the start of the protests. Keep in mind, this is with most people largely staying in during this time as stated in the article above.
this data is from June 24th
So, yes, it appears there have been spikes in Covid19 cases over the last 2 or 3 weeks.
Media outlets are fighting over who is worse, the red states or the blue states. Those trying to paint the red states as worse are deliberately ignoring the spikes in blue states, and vice versa. Meanwhile, most states are doing rather poorly in containing the virus, with Texas up there in the top 3, along with California and Florida. There are about 30 states that have had spikes over the last few weeks.
Beaches are another potential factor in some of these spikes. As of the first week in June, about half of California’s beaches were open. As of the first week in May, all counties in Florida had their beaches open except 3. Most of these beaches merely require social distancing guidelines, but obviously that does no good if those guidelines are ignored or not enforced.
This isn’t only a problem in the US. This is the current situation in England:
We’re gonna end up on quarantine again, aren’t we?
🏴☠️ CHAZ Update 🏴☠️:
The CHAZ has evidently changed its name to the CHOP, removing the “Autonomous Zone” and replacing it with “Organized Protest”. This is likely due to the fact that the CHAZ was in fact not autonomous in any capacity. Most folks still call it the CHAZ though, because it’s still the CHAZ in our hearts. Meanwhile, the official CHOP twitter account has been posting goofy stuff like this:
In addition to mostly being nonsensical word salad, most of the “facts” in these posts don’t debunk, let alone have anything to do with the “myths” they are attempting to debunk. It’s like the account is run by a badly programmed artificial intelligence. The above posts are both wrong regardless, seeing as how businesses affected by the CHAZ are suing the city:
The mayor of Seattle is finally coming to her senses after the rampant nightly crime in the CHAZ finally became too much to ignore. Only ten days prior to this she was downplaying concerns about this very thing stating “Seattle is fine. Don’t be so afraid of democracy.”
Someone on twitter jokingly pointed out that technically the CHAZ has a higher per capita shooting rate than any place on Earth currently. We did it guys! We solved police violence by shooting more people than the police do!
Nooses! Nooses, Everywhere!
Finally, in “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” news, there have been not one, but two hoaxes involving nooses in the last week alone. The first happened prior to my last post, but I held off posting about it, figuring the other would inevitably ended up being a hoax as well. Noose hoaxes tend to be one of the most prevalent types of hoaxes these days. Jussie Smollett anyone?
First up, a few “nooses” were found around Oakland. Except it turns out they were literally just regular ropes that were commonly used for exercising. The two look nothing alike, but once again… when all you have is a hammer.
The second noose hoax of the week was NASCAR related. The racing team of Bubba Wallace moved into a new garage and promptly reported a hate crime pertaining to a noose hanging in said garage. Bubba himself never even saw this “noose”, but that didn’t stop the outrage machine from shifting into high gear. Somewhat unsurprisingly, it turned out the noose was just a rope to pull the garage door down.
It’s extremely hard to believe that anyone who works in a garage for a living could possibly have mistaken a garage door pull cord with a noose, but it sure was great publicity for everybody involved, and the media got their clicks and sold their ads. So all is well, and we can repeat the process again countless times, and nobody will ever learn not to jump to conclusions.
Whoa! I finally changed the look of my website after like 5 years. It’s about time. I’m still messing around with it a lot and trying different things out, so it might look completely different later on, or it might not. WHO EVEN KNOWS.
Who cares though, bro. We’re in the middle of a *reverb engaged*…
Remember the pandemic? The pandemic the media somehow forgot about for the last two or three weeks? There’s an explanation for that. You see, evidently the virus went away as a sign of solidarity for the protests, as viruses are wont to do. Granted, there are still huge protests going on right now, but according to the media, these people are magically safe. People gathering for any other reason are still in danger and endangering other people though. That’s just how science works. Deal with it, dude.
It was a mere 2 months ago that people were being arrested for things like walking or paddle-boarding alone on the beach. Both activities have a 0% risk of infection. You can’t infect anyone else if there’s nobody around you. Ironically, police intervention actually increases the chance of infection. Can’t arrest anyone while also observing the 6 foot rule. These types of arrests were gross government overreach, and completely not in line with the science on the matter.
Now we’re at the point where these arrests have all but ceased as the number of violations has become astronomical. Nothing has changed as far as how viruses thrive. Not wearing masks and not maintaining a distance of six feet are still the prime spreaders. Every protest has been in gross violation of both of these rules. From a moral standpoint, most would argue that these transgressions are justifiable. The law doesn’t always operate on morality however. If anything, this just shows that if enough people violate a mandate, the government will just shrug its shoulders and move on. They can’t arrest everyone after all.
A common argument for the protests is that “everyone is wearing masks” and that “the virus is worse indoors”. Both of these are half-truths.
First off, not everyone at these protests has been wearing masks. Not even close.
A decent amount of people in the above photo aren’t wearing masks, quite a few have their masks down, and there’s no way of telling if those currently wearing masks left them on for the duration of the protest. It’s hot outside most places, and it’s hard to breathe through a mask in the heat. Six feet of distance obviously isn’t being observed here either. It does you no good to have a mask if it isn’t covering your nose and mouth, especially in a crowd where people are chanting and/or yelling, which spreads the virus. The above photo might in fact be a viral disaster. It’s also fairly par for the course given the number of photos I’ve seen from different cities, states and countries.
Once again, you can acknowledge that these protests might be disastrous from a transmission standpoint, while also holding the stance that they are warranted.
Protests are also primarily safer outdoors than indoors. One of the reasons Covid spreads easier indoors is due to the fact that it’s harder to engage in social distancing outdoors, i.e. the six-foot rule. If people are standing shoulder-to-shoulder outdoors for extended periods, this benefit is largely negated however. The only safety measure you have in place at that point are masks. Unless there is a breeze, the virus really isn’t going to be dispersed upward. The particles can remain in the air for quite a while; most reports I’ve seen say up to 3 hours.
During an indoor gathering, air conditioners merely blow the particles around without decent re-circulation and filtration. This is partly why most of the initial spread took place in office buildings, churches, and other indoor areas. It also turns out that sunlight does kill the virus to a degree, a point that was initially disputed:
Trump is about to have a rally in Tusla, and it’s most likely going to be a disaster. Trump has made it a point to downplay the virus at every opportunity and avoid wearing masks because it’s become a part of his “too cool for school” image. Predictably, a lot of his die-hards have also become anti-mask and sometimes even downright conspiratorial about the severity (or existence) of Covid19. The BOK center holds almost 20,000 people, and the place will probably be packed. Between the lack of distancing (6 feet) and masks being optional, we’re about to witness an experiment in viral transmission.
Not to take responsibility off of Trump, because he has all the latest information at his disposal, and should know better at this point, but once again, the medical authorities have dropped the ball countless times during the last few months. I’ve posted numerous instances of people within the medical community downplaying the effectiveness of masks, including the US Surgeon General. Here’s one more instance of the mask flip-flop in effect:
This type of flip-flop is fueling the conspiratorial nonsense. Masks have always been effective. That’s why they’ve been common-place in parts of the world for decades. They help reduce the spread of airborne diseases, from the common flu, to past epidemics, like the swine flu. It’s pretty damning that any doctor was downplaying the effectiveness of masks at any point during the last few months. People who saw masks being downplayed initially are probably more prone to disregard further information from these sources, or any medical source for that matter.
In addition, you have non-science based policies like this:
The virus doesn’t care about why people are gathered together. It’s not only going to infect people who are having a backyard BBQ. These arbitrary policies aren’t making anything better. They should be reinforcing the importance of masks, soap, and the six feet rule, not pulling random numbers out of a hat. Also, what’s to stop any random gathering of people from merely stating that they are protesting something? 100-person protest-BBQs, here we come.
On top of that, we’re implementing pointless contact tracing measures:
New York is at it again.
It does absolutely no good to implement contact tracing unless you’re being thorough about it. Ignoring that someone potentially spent all day out in a crowd of 1000+ people completely defeats the purpose. This is why this type on contact tracing will never work. It isn’t going to be thorough enough. Contact tracing works in places like South Korea because it’s done via GPS, not a people filling out questionnaires and purposely ignoring critical info.
It’s unlikely that the U.S. could ever implement contact tracing of this type because it would be seen as invasive and unconstitutional. I doubt too many people on either side of the aisle want our shady government tracking our every move and peeping in on our credit transactions. Probably wouldn’t be a problem if we stopped electing people we can’t trust into office, but then it wouldn’t be America. *sick guitar riff plays*
After two weeks, the protests are still going strong.
We’ve (mostly) moved on from torching fast food restaurants and throwing bricks though Verizon windows, to pulling down any statue that even vaguely resembles a person. Thus far, most have been confederate statues, but we’re already on the cusp of losing the plot.
A bunch of statues have already been defaced that somewhat undermine the point of the protests, including these two abolitionists:
This is why aimless destruction for the sake of mob justice usually isn’t the best policy. There’s always plenty of people willing to jump though hoops to justify this kind of thing though, because the ends justify the means, or some such platitude.
25 actual confederate statues have been removed by state governments thus far, with Virginia and Alabama leading the pack, and many more are slated to be removed on the horizon. It’s also worth noting that despite it making for a rad photo op, it’s probably better to pressure the government into removing statues, otherwise something like this could happen:
On a more whimsical note, a bunch of kids in Seattle have taken advantage of the almost non-existent police presence in the area to create a utopia of sorts. They call it the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or CHAZ for short.
For the most part, it seems to be kids hanging out, watching movies, eating pizza, and living out their Lord of the Flies fantasies. The people within the community who are taking it a little too seriously are providing an unlimited source of memes however.
As is the scenario in every Communist utopia that has ever existed since the dawning of time, inevitably someone steps up to install themselves as the de facto leader, and immediately starts abusing their authority. In the CHAZ, this someone is called Raz, and he’s evidently a soundcloud rapper. A mere 24 hours after the CHAZ was founded, it’s already embroiled in a power struggle.
Another problem in the CHAZ is that absolutely nobody has any discernible life skills, outside of spray painting, rolling blunts, and setting things on fire. This is a substantial hurdle when attempting to create a new society. Their reddit page is full of comedic gold including pictures of a “garden” that was planted.
Yes, that’s just dirt poured on top of cardboard, with plants that were no doubt yoinked from a nursery somewhere planted in that two inches of dirt. Unfortunately you can’t just plant HotPockets™ trees.
Overall, it seems pretty harmless though. As long as the revolutionary LARPers trying to live out their Che Guevara fantasies are kept at bay, it might remain chill. There are quite a few dubious types with guns within the CHAZ.
Finally, Minneapolis has decided to “abolish the police”.
That’s quite a bold move. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. I keep seeing people using Camden, New Jersey as a model for police reform, but evidently that city isn’t necessarily the success story it’s being propped up as.
So apparently quarantine is over, and boy is it over in grand fashion.
We went from: “Covid-19 is a pandemic, how dare you go out in public, I hope the police arrest these people putting everyone else at risk”, to: “Oh well, fuck it”, in the matter of like 24 hours. Now the police are suddenly the bad guys again, and the people gathering outside are the heroes. What a plot twist to end all plot twists.
Obviously there’s a reason for all of this, namely continued police brutality and the subsequent lack of accountability that always seems to follow. That series of events that happens over and over again like in that movie Groundhog Day ™ starring Chris Elliott and also Bill Murray. Cop uses excessive force, civilian dies, cop gets put on paid leave, people get outraged, cop is finally held accountable, cop only gets a slap on the wrist, it turns out the cop had a long history of bad conduct, repeat the process again next month.
Now we’re gathering outside in cities across America as if Covid-19 was nothing more than a fad or meme that had lived past its expiration date.
Which bring us to now. When I originally started writing this post a few days ago, it was merely chronicling some of the events that had transpired. I wrote about the peaceful protests, the opportunists hijacking the movement to “smash capitalism” and steal shit, and how the different media outlets were choosing to portray these events.
When I was almost done with the post, I realized something. For all the tweets and pictures of gatherings and destruction, I had like 3 times as many pictures of outright police brutality that had occurred in the just the span of a week. So I scrubbed what I had already written, and am posting this instead.
I’ll write about some of the other goings on later, but for now I’m just going to catalog some of the more egregious instances of police overreach. This entire situation started over police brutality, so it’s ironic that so much brutality has transpired during protests against said brutality.
* the woman above was actually 21, not 15 The initial report from the police was that the man above tripped, until video was released showing that he was actually pushed. This reporter ended up losing the eye.
