Border Control
A reminder, should one be needed, that we live in an age of ironies:
WATCH: Community defenders stop an out of state vehicle at the filter blockade, run the plate through a database, and confirm whether the vehicle is affiliated with abductors before letting it through. pic.twitter.com/PqBXlhIHb7
— Minneapolis Spring (@mpls_spring) February 1, 2026
“Papers, please. I see you’re not from around here.”
Update, via the comments:
Rafi adds,
Well, you’d think that on just a thematic level there might be some dim flickering. But apparently not. And so we get psychological misfits setting up their own checkpoints and harassing random drivers.
EmC asks, not unfairly,
They do seem to think they’re in charge of who may travel where, which laws may be enforced, or indeed broken, and which election results can be ignored.
Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
Looks like a “high tolerance of internal contradiction”…
Well, you’d think that on just a thematic level there might be some dim flickering. But apparently not. And so we get psychological misfits setting up their own checkpoints and harassing random drivers.
“Papers, please. I see you’re not from around here.”
“community defenders”
“abductors”
My kingdom for a rectification of language.
My parents won’t let me detransition.
Yup. Come to this.
May I suggest bars on the windows of their homes. It’s quite effective in all the American ghetto neighborhoods.
F*cking incredible.
Previously in the world of vigorously progressive protesting.
So are they our new rulers now?
They do seem to think they’re in charge of who may travel where, which laws may be enforced, and which election results can be ignored. And doubtless other things.
Come, let us all celebrate her manniversity. Not you, just you kids.
In much the same vein:
“Paved the way”, the things we learn from (cleans screen) college newspapers. RTWT
Other things.
Which ones are the fascists again?
So…it’s winter. My understanding of such situations in snow country is that many people keep a beater due to the bad weather increasing the likelihood of body damage or worse. Surely this situation calls for employment of such a resource.
Nah, bro. Got as far as “It’s no secret that the rights of transgender and queer Americans are under attack,” and decided it’s just not for me. You enjoy yourself tho.
[ Post updated. ]
See? This place is totally switched-on and interactive.
David, I would love to know what you are reading. What 19th-century fiction, dusty collections of essays, portfolios of paintings? And I’ll bet your commenters must be wonderful readers.
Re: Minnesota.
These nasty little brownshorts will be the first against the wall when the Revolution comes.
The last books I read or re-read – as opposed to online articles, essays, etc – included Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals (the chapter on Marx is particularly damning), Vincent LoBrutto’s book about Stanley Kubrick, and Andrew Bostom’s dense but quite excellent The Legacy of Jihad.
I haven’t read fiction in years. Decades, in fact.
I just assume they drink heavily. Whatever’s to hand. Cleaning products and so forth.
I read a prediction a few years ago that the largest pushback against detransition was going to be the parents. Admitting that their children were never trans would be admitting that they allowed/enabled their child to be permanently butchered and disfigured (even if it was just blockers and hormones) because they fell for a passing youth-culture fad.
And the parents that did this were typically educated, middle-class people. They base their entire sense of worth on their intelligence and insight, which of course they never had.
Mennen aftershave filtered through a half a loaf of Wonder® Bread.
On this, see Helen Joyce.
I second Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals and am currently reading Gad Saad The Parasitic Mind.
Love her.
In other versions of this statement she explicitly mentions how one such parent in a management position can lock their organization in a pro-trans position. Just hinted at here.
Can’t find it now, but there’s another clip where she compares the trans families to the Japanese soldiers found on Pacific islands decades after WWII had ended… they will be the very last to admit the truth.
I have particularly mixed feelings about the fathers, many of whom seem to have abdicated/been emasculated long before this issue arose. You sometimes see them in news coverage with winsome toothache smiles that imply they let their better judgement be overruled.
It is liquid shoe polish strained through a 3 week old loaf of bread. Please, get your recipes straight, we don’t want to mislead anyone reading.
Meanwhile, speaking if ICE and contadictions, another top tier mayoral candidate advocates for getting ICE out peacefully, but with strong force.
David’s face inserted into the original album art for Switched On Bach.
Note that the father has the right of it – it was always just attention-seeking behaviour.
And that he went along with it and lost friends because of it. He’s not angry at his daughter; he’s angry at himself for allowing the women in the family to run the family.
I abandoned fantasy and SF fiction years ago. Long before the current woke infestation of publishing, the vast majority of it just isn’t very good and is clearly written by people with no life experience beyond their college D&D game. (Ream’s Rejoinder to Sturgeon’s Law: Shit is still shit.)
Historical fiction has nicely filled that gap, as the market is more demanding and generally knowledgeable enough about the topic that authors can’t half-ass their way through it. It’s bit heavily weighted towards the murder mystery genre though.
If I ever encounter something like that around me, I’m blowing right through it.
Some time ago on Twitter I read a tweet along the lines of, (and I’m paraphrasing here) “If there are no borders around your country, you’ll end up putting borders around everything else.” Seems apt, I think, and in more ways than one.
Mayor Brandon Johnson just signed executive order to have Chicago police arrest ICE officers. These twits really want Ft Sumpter.
Instalanche…
Up goes the price of drinks …
[ Ups price of drinks. ]
I’m investing in popcorn futures.
I want a good story, I want the unexpected and I like a little humor tossed in. Fiction is my “let’s have fun” time.
I’m a fan of Larry Correia’s writings and also a latecomer to the Dresden Files. Outside of SF/F, I enjoyed Bosch series of books. I read some Reacher books and was so-so on them but I’m actually finding the series on Amazon entertaining and well done.
I was stopped early last month in Minneapolis by a group of activists.
At first, I thought they were just terrifyingly aggressive homeless people. It turns out they were only interested in finding out if I was ICE or not. Unfortunately,the vehicle I was driving at the time was a Blacked-out Dodge Durango SRT (BTW I love that thing! It’s freaking awesome!!!).
At that time, ICE was using Durangos for everything –some marked some not, so the activists started stopping any Durango they saw and checked to make sure it didn’t have a bunch ICE agents in it.
They let me go because I looked like a terrified middle-aged woman trying to go home from work. I looked that way because I was.
I hate this stuff with a passion.
“It’s like having my own personal chef.”
Border control in a protest about border control. I would laugh except for all the reasons it’s insanely sad.
[ Muffled cackling. ]
Have you read any of Michael Flynn’s works? (The author, not the general.)
For me, it’s largely a matter of impatience.* I don’t read to fill time and I prefer information to come at me fairly briskly. As I’ve often said, pacing is rather important. An underappreciated skill.
I went through a phase, many years ago, of picking up novels that were supposedly good, glowing reviews, and found way too much padding. No sense of economy. I found myself actually muttering, out loud, “Get to the fucking point.”
*I know, it’s my only vice.
No I haven’t. Which book should I start with? I’m always on the lookout to add to my reading stack!
Which is why I just don’t listen to podcasts. And the only audible books I have I got to listen to while driving from SoCal to Washington state. I read a whole lot faster.
If you’re looking for a series, I’d recommend Firestar. If you’re looking for something stand-alone I’d recommend Eifelheim, The Wreck of The River of Stars, or In the Belly of the Whale (his final book).
[ Eye twitches at mention of podcasts. ]
I’ve long been in the habit of watching YouTube videos with the playback speed cranked up. I’ve watched plenty of videos by, say, Simon Webb, but I can’t bear them at normal speed.
Again, only known vice.
“I haven’t a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices.” – Mark Twain
Faster than normal speed is unbearable – it’s like listening to Alvin the Chipmunk.
That was my reaction to Frank Herbert’s endless Dune sequels.
Likewise Larry Niven’s endless Ringworld sequels: “Do you really have anything more to say that’s interesting and worth an entire novel?”
Other flaws, too.
I eventually concluded that most reviewers could not be trusted.
One feature of my Kindle I like is that I can download a sample … a chapter or two … and decide if I want to get the whole thing after that. It’s kind of what I used to do in bookstores … stand and read a few pages before getting it regardless of book cover blurbs. Which is where I also learned, as SF/F got more woke, that “Hugo Winner” on the cover signaled “book to avoid” to me.
I was very excited to discover that a game I’ve been playing, Rogue Defence, has an option to play in fast-forward mode.
There was mad cackling.