Thoughts on Cole Allen

Depending on what you have read about Cole Allen, the attempted shooter at the White House Correspondents Dinner, you may or may not know that he held very "normie" political beliefs. He wasn't extremely left-wing or right-wing. If anything, he was anti-left, anti-socialist, in the kinds of things he posted and reposted in social media. He believed in capitalism, but that things had gone wrong under Republicans and particularly Donald Trump.

BlueSky posters who have read his "manifesto" say things like:

I love that the New York Post calls it “sprawling” and “crazed” when it’s barely 1,000 words and sane. I disagree strongly with his decision to try a mass shooting, but this is the sanest explanation by a mass shooter ever.
@dwilliamesq.bsky.social

He doesn't want anyone to follow his example because he doesn't want them to be hurt or punished. His objective was to stop the extreme actions of this regime. He doesn't even talk about avenging what's already happened or punishing anyone. He just wanted it to stop, which is the moderate position.
@antifunk.bsky.social

The point at which a sane, morally principled award-winning teacher who is angry about school shootings picks up a gun and thinks it’s the only way to make a difference is a bad place to be in. Dismissing him as a crazy person and blaming Dems is disingenuous and dishonest.
Elizabeth Spiers

Yep. I described it to my husband as reasoned, rational and a very, very bad sign.
BratKnits

That someone like Allen would do what he did is a very bad sign: that is a recurring statement on BlueSky.  

Allen, it appears, grew up in a family that was part of an evangelical church that had splintered from the Christan Reformed Church in North America — the arch-conservative sect that's home to Betsy Devos — because the CRC was too liberal. (Local news story on his family here.) Given his current politics, Kathryn Brightbill, a writer on the religious right, speculated that Allen may be part of the ex-evangelical wave, where it's common for peoples' politics to have changed but their underlying comfort with violence has not.

She wrote:

I've been worried about something like this for quite a while now, because you can't flirt with the idea of justifiable violence as much as conservative Reformed culture does, even as they're condemning it on the surface, and not end up with people who rationalize their way to doing violence.

Someone else said that Allen sounds depressed and that his writings are a suicide note. I can see that. It makes me think of people who have self-imolated as protest. 

Fear and Fury

When I wrote a few months ago about Heather Thompson's Atlantic article on the Bernie Goetz subway shooting, I didn't realize she had a book coming out on the subject. 

That book is Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage. If you liked her Atlantic article, the book gives a fuller picture of the whole case, and particularly of the cultural and media landscape that surrounded it.

As with the story of the so-called Central Park Five (the Exonerated Five), Thompson's book makes it clear just how much the four young men shot by Goetz in December 1984 were not the perpetrators in this case. 

One of the four, Darrell Cabey, was sitting at a distance from Goetz, who shot at him once, missed, and then moved to stand over him: 

The man stopped just in front of Darrell, looming over him as Darrell said plaintively, "I didn't do nothing!" But it was as if this man couldn't hear him. In a cold, calm tone, the man raised his gun again and said, "You don't look too bad, here's another," before shooting Darrell point-blank (p. 80).

That shooting of Darrell Cabey is a key part of Goetz's legal case, because as a reader can see, there is no self-defense justification for what he did.

There were two facts about Cabey and Goetz that I learned from the earlier pages of the book.

One is the brief story of Cabey's father, Ronald. He was a truck driver who owned his own truck and made enough income to support a family of six, with a mom who stayed home to care for the kids. They lived in Far Rockaway, Queens. 

When Darrell was 7, Ronald was eating supper in a diner while he was on the road. He saw a thief stealing his truck. Ronald jumped on the running board and tried to eject the thief, but was thrown out the door as another car was passing in the driveway. There was a crash and he was killed. Darrell's mom Shirley was 26, with five kids to support somehow. She moved the family to public housing in the Bronx.

What does something like that do to a kid (and his siblings, and his mom)? They all needed therapy they never got.

Bernie Goetz, born in 1947, grew up first in Queens as well, but then in a rural part of Duchess County, New York, along the Hudson River north of the city. His parents were both German immigrants; his father built a successful business, and by all accounts was a domineering jerk at home. 

In 1960, Goetz senior was charged with molesting two 15-year-old boys. It sounds like there was a lot of evidence against him. Goetz senior "required that his children attend every day of his May 1960 trial as a show of support, and this each child was inundated with 'the unpleasant details of the accusations.'" (p. 21) Goetz senior was found guilty of eight counts. During his appeal, Bernie was sent to boarding school in Europe. His father got some of the remaining counts dismissed on technicalities and took a plea on the remaining four, finally receiving only a suspended sentence on one charge (disorderly conduct). 

What does something like that do to a kid, on top of the earlier emotional abuse? It's not an excuse in any way, but Bernie Goetz clearly needed therapy he never got. 

Neither of these family and personal tragedies is the point of Thompson's book, which is very much what its subtitle says. But on a human level, it's hard not to feel empathy, even for Goetz.

Bernie Goetz will be turning 80 next year. He's still a hero to way too many Americans, and served as a model for other killers like Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny. Maybe if he'd had some therapy, at least it would have been someone else who set off the flame that was waiting to be lit.

Hell Yeah for Automatic Noodle

I got a copy of Annalee Newitz's novella Automatic Noodle not long after it came out late last summer, but then it sat on one of my staggering towers of to-be-read fiction books. I'm not sure why, since I love her Terraformers novel (though I never did post about that).

This week Automatic Noodle was named as a finalist for the Hugo, Locus, and Nebula awards, and since I had just finished the nonfiction book I had been reading, that finally got me to pick it up off its pile of unreads.

It's a breezy, sweet book about food, climate change, robots, and community. Among other things. Its people are making themselves into themselves, so hell yeah for that. 

It's a nice break from heavier science fiction, or any kind of thing that's getting you down. (Even if — spoiler alert — it does take place after a civil war in the U.S.)

It's Not About the Flag

The current Minnesota state flag situation is a perfect example of the way Dave Roberts and others have described the control of the right-wing media/social media ecosystem over its audience.

As people here know and I've written before, Minnesota got a new flag design and state seal about 2.5 years ago. Our previous flag was a blue blanket with the state seal in the middle of it. The previous seal was a circle depicting a white settler plowing a field with his rifle leaning against a stump, while a Native man rode his horse off toward the west. On the flag, the seal looked like an unintelligible mess of colors that required inclusion of the word MINNESOTA to have any possibility of viewers knowing what state it represented.

The new flag and seal were the result of a commission appointed by the State Legislature when the DFL had a trifecta, but the commission was not controlled by Democrats in the Legislature. Instead, it was led by design professionals and had representation from the state's Historical Society, the State Arts Board, the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board, the Secretary of State (the only elected official), reps from the state's major tribes and several other cultural groups, and three people who are called "general member of the public." There were four non-voting members from the Legislature, two from each party.

The process included a call for submissions to the general public. And a huge number of residents responded with a wide array of visual ideas! It was fun to see them all and many people expressed their opinions on the designs. The Commission winnowed the submissions down, voted, and revised a bit to professionalize the final choice — submitted by a 20-something white guy from southwestern Minnesota — to what became the final design. 

By all objective criteria, one would think this was a great outcome. The chosen design is praised by professional flag people (vexillographers) for its clarity, meaning to Minnesota, and recognizability as a flag. 

But here we are today with the city councils of some smaller cities in greater Minnesota, and even a few Twin Cities suburbs, voting to bring back the old flag to use at their city halls. Why? 

In my opinion, it's entirely a case of right-wing media or social media railing against it and feeding that captive audience to believe the flag is "woke." Some believe it's the flag of Somalia. Really. 

Bill Lindeke wrote a nice essay about the flag and a bit about the controversy today for MinnPost, which is what prompted me to also write. I agree with him that insisting on using the old flag is the Minnesota equivalent of flying the Confederate stars and bars. 

But I also think this controversy over the new flag is our local example of how right-wing true believers are manipulated, or want to be manipulated, into following whatever version of reality their overlords give them. 

Currently, the construction of data centers and even ICE detention centers are widely unpopular on a bipartisan basis among regular people. I predict that soon one or both will also become partisan, with Republicans falling in line to support data centers and concentration camps, as their leaders tell them what to think about them. The same way they have come to oppose wind farms — even though Texas and Iowa are major producers of wind energy, for instance.

The Minnesota flag wasn't a partisan controversy at first either. There were progressives who wanted different flags, or didn't particularly like this flag. It was made controversial. The flag could have been an image of anything, any kind of design. Between the fact that it was something that changed and who was in charge when it changed... that was enough for it to be bad, in their eyes.

Don't Spy on Me

Senator Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, has been working to protect privacy for a long time. 

Today he posted this thread to BlueSky (all quoted between the lines).

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The NSA and FBI have been spying on you without a warrant using section 702 of FISA for decades. Trump wants Congress to renew the law. Here are concrete examples of how this law has been abused – across administrations – and why Congress shouldn't rubber-stamp it.

• In 2020 Trump used 702 to spy on Black Lives Matter protestors.
• In 2021, the Biden administration used 702 to search the communications of multiple government officials, journalists and political commentators.
• Also in 2021, the Biden administration used it to spy on 19,000 donors to a political campaign.
• In 2022, an NSA employee used the 702 database to stalk women he met on dating apps.
• In 2019, Trump used this law to spy on members of Congress.
• In 2022, the Biden administration used it to spy on a state court judge who reported police abuses to the FBI.

Those are the ways in which we KNOW this law has been abused. The takeaway here is that NO ONE’S personal information or communications are safe.

Here’s how I’m concerned the Trump administration could use it in the future if Congress reauthorizes it:

• In 2024, Congress expanded Section 702 to cover “illicit synthetic drugs.” I fear the Trump administration could target women living in states with abortion restrictions that get abortion medications from overseas providers.
• Stephen Miller is behind the Trump administration’s push to reauthorize 702. They have already designated “Antifa” organizations as foreign terrorist groups. It’s likely Miller will use 702 to surveil, target, and suppress activists on the left.
• Also in 2024, Congress expanded the range of who can be forced to comply with Section 702 surveillance orders. Your cable guy could be forced to install spyware on behalf of the government and help them surveil you.
• 702 abuses span across administrations and political spectrums. I’ve fought for reforms to Section 702 of FISA during every administration. This isn’t a red issue or a blue issue – it’s a civil liberties issue. Security and liberty aren’t mutually exclusive.

But rubber-stamping these powers for Donald Trump poses a unique and chilling threat to Americans’ most basic constitutional rights.

The deadline to renew the law is coming up next week. Trump needs both Republicans AND Democrats to vote to reauthorize this law. Anyone with a pulse ought to see that in no world should Trump and Kash Patel have these powers.

I’ll continue fighting like hell to sound the alarm and throw up roadblocks. But if the thought of the Trump administration having these powers scares you, now’s the time to make your voice heard.

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This is the spot where I say, Contact your U.S. senators to express your opinion on renewing Section 702 of FISA. It sounds like an obscure bunch of numbers and letters, but it's not.
 

Earth Day Data Visualization

The warming of the Earth can be seen in the global average temperature year by year. Usually that data is shown within a relatively short time span, like this graph that starts in 1850:

That increase in the past few decades looks pretty extreme. 

But check out how much more extreme it looks when it's shown on a scale of 2,000 years: 

As always, this is where you can show the annual stripes (since 1895) globally, nationally, regionally, or locally.

Fascism 101

Here's some news from today that may or may not get coverage:

RFK Jr. just said that immigration is to blame for the outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases in the U.S., not him.
Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD

Yet again I remind everyone that "foreigners are corrupting our pure blood with weakness and disease" is Fascism 101. Not some variant, not some metaphorically similar thing, not some echo — the thing itself.
David Roberts @volts.wtf 

This is a gift link to today's New York Times story by a British mother whose 11-year-old daughter died from measles complications 10 years after she had contracted it as an infant — at an age when children are too young to be vaccinated, and have to rely on herd immunity. 

I had no idea you could die from measles years later.

The even more messed up part of the RFK immigration B.S., at least here in Minnesota, is that there are people trying to convince our immigrant neighbors that vaccines cause autism, and it's having an effect on the vaccination rate. I don't know if they're run-of-the-mill anti-vaxxers or if they're anti-immigration, trying to use it to gin up hate against immigrants as unclean. It's so hard to tell these days. But it fits perfectly with what RFK Jr. is up to.

Bumming Around Watching TV

I spent most of my foot-recovery time this weekend watching two seasons of Shrinking on Apple TV. I had heard just a tiny bit about it before that. Basically, all I knew was that Harrison Ford is in it, and he's a therapist or psychologist. 

Recommended dramedy escapism, heavy on California lifestyles and unapologetic about it. 

With Jessica Williams as a major character, who I haven't seen much if at all since her original run on the Daily Show (which ended almost 10 years ago, egad). I missed her.

Agnotology

Today I learned the word agnotology, which would be a millennial if it were a human being.

The definition is the "study of deliberate, culturally cultivated ignorance or doubt, typically to sell a product, influence opinion, or win favor, particularly through the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data."

Hard to believe there wasn't a word for that kind of thing before 1992, but I guess no one realized we needed a word for it much before then. Campaigns by the tobacco and fossil fuel industries are examples of agnotology subjects. The book Merchants of Doubt is mentioned on the word's Wikipedia page.

These days, it has even wider application, unfortunately, and not enough experts studying it.

Line Goes Straight Up

George Pearkes, a finance guy who makes a lot of interesting graphs, posted this to BlueSky yesterday:

Absolutely insane numbers on data center buildout. I haven’t vetted these but they’re about right based on memory/back of the envelope:

Be sure to click to enlarge and read the labels on those variously colored lines.*

Sure, the 2026 dotted line is planned data centers, but even the 2025 line — which represents stuff that is already built — is bananas. And that's just about money spent, not about who the AI run through the data centers will benefit. 

In response in Pearkes's thread, a guy named Marc Maxmeister spoke for me with this: 

Interesting to recognize the Marshall Plan as being so big, so fast, and so effective. US rebuilt Western Europe in half a decade and we haven't seen any regional wars there since then. The prosperity influx demilitarized a region. That's success.

Here are a couple of other related pieces:

An article I've been saving for way too long in an open tab: We suspected data centers were creating an energy crisis for Virginia. Now it’s official. If you haven't been to Northern Virginia, particularly the part west of Dulles Airport, in the past 10 years or so… it's dominated by huge data centers. They know whereof they speak.

From MinnPost just this week: Minnesota Democrats (and a few Republicans) are fighting to ban non-disclosure agreements between local officials and big corporations that want to build data centers. Yes, that's right, elected county and city officials — who are subject to open-meeting laws and the Freedom of Information Act — have been signing non-disclosure agreements with big "anonymous" companies developing mystery projects that somehow always turn out to be data centers. Which none of the residents of the counties and cities want. Go figure!

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* The point of this post is to talk about the travesty of data center construction compared to infrastructure investments like the Marshall Plan, the railroads, or the interstate system — much as I might have problems with some of those. But I can't help noting I find myself pretty shocked that the F-35 fighter jet program cost substantially more than the Apollo program. 

Something's Afoot

No real post from me tonight. 

I did a dumb thing and stumbled off a curb, which has resulted in what may be a broken foot. So I'm currently sitting here with my leg elevated and an ice pack on the foot. 

Shivering and in a bit of pain. Drat. (I said worse words at the time.)

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Saturday update: the foot is relatively fine: not broken. I guess it's a strained or sprained tendon, so RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation) for a few days. I can walk on it with a limp, and walking on it is good, they say — which was my biggest worry last night, aside from the pain as an indicator of worse things.

Pain is much improved and not much swelling, so I think all will be well.

Let Us Be in Charge

An extended spur from yesterday's early April 2026 BlueSky round-up:

kinda funny how Republican voters are inarguably happier when a Democrat is president. they don’t actually want to be in charge of shit, they want to roll coal and whip themselves into a frenzy over wholly imaginary liberal tyranny. now they’ve caught the car and it fuckin sucks
ryan cooper

Can't recall a single moment from Trump's first term where his base was like, "this is great, everything's going great." Hell, his final campaign message was to just show clips from the news and say, "this is what life would be like under Biden, isn't it terrible?"
Dan Thiell

Lol forgot about that. "Riots in the streets – Biden's America." Sir, you are still President for 6 more months.
John Smillie


spacealpaka

The not-funny part is all the damage they do while in power, and all the cleanup the Dems have to spend time doing once they're back in power.
Dennis D. @dennisdoubleday.bsky.social

And the clean-up takes longer than 4 years, so these cockspanks end up blaming the Democrats and electing another clusterfuck Republican shithead.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster @almightynoodle1.bsky.social