Hey, babe, not to worry.

Whole thing was a false flag operation anyway.

Mentally disturbed, as expected, with a parent who seems to have thought access to guns was just what the doctor ordered.

A reactionary gunfucker who openly broadcast violent views.

Exactly the age and gender at highest risk for blowing everyone away in a public setting.

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Yeah, I know. What are we spozed to do about it, UD? Arrest and hold all nutty young male reactionary gunfuckers?

Well, we can at least prosecute and jail the degenerates who allow these incredibly dangerous people access to guns.

Joanna Soltan walks the Bonhoeffer Circle.

Go here for an earlier post.

He gave himself the name Phoenix in 2020; he was born Christian Gunnar Eriksen. He has always had developmental and psychological problems, not helped by three nutty parents fighting about him for years.

… truly principled.

‘“I don’t think it’s a nuisance,” he said.

The laughter from the audience following that comment temporarily paused the hearing.’

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It isn’t just communities having to fight gun ranges down the street; more importantly, it’s the faith of the gun range owner that daily life permeated by shattering machine gun fire is fine, akin to the ordinary fact of traffic noise. He expects the rest of us to share his faith in the great god Gun, that this god be constantly in our ears. He expects us to sacrifice our peace of mind to that god. Guns in America are the universal god, with us always, blasting away.

After Sandy Hook, Gary Wills wrote:

We guarantee that crazed man after crazed man will have a flood of killing power readily supplied him. We have to make that offering, out of devotion to our Moloch, our god. The gun is our Moloch. We sacrifice children to him daily. … The gun is not a mere tool, a bit of technology, a political issue, a point of debate. It is an object of reverence… Adoration of Moloch permeates the country, imposing a hushed silence as he works his will. One cannot question his rites, even as the blood is gushing through the idol’s teeth. … We are required to deny that there is any connection between the fact that we have the greatest number of guns in private hands and the greatest number of deaths from them. Denial on this scale always comes from or is protected by religious fundamentalism…  [T]he Supreme Court has been cowed, reversing its own long history of recognizing that the Second Amendment applied to militias. Now the court feels bound to guarantee that any every madman can indulge his “religion” of slaughter… So let us celebrate the falling bodies … as a demonstration of our fealty, our bondage, to the great god Gun.

Our constant mass murders are religious events, ritual reenactments of the sacrificial blood we offer the great god Gun. Each massacre – today’s, tomorrow’s – prompts this prayer: O Lord, make us truly worthy of this our sacrifice for your bloody majesty.

American universities should have drills on what to do when there isn’t an active shooter on campus.

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Says here they’ve arrested someone. Four people are being treated in hospitals.

Let’s see if we can’t draw a picture of the shooter. Male. Very young, like 19. Psychotic, has been undergoing treatment for years. Name either excruciatingly Mayflower (Randolph Higginbottom The Fourth) or way ethnic (Alfredo Ibn Gandhi).

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You remember, right? The last shooting at FSU?

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[A] student who lived through the Parkland shooting entered [a room where students were sheltering]. “He was like, ‘Man, I never thought this would happen again.'”

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“At least one dead.”

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Hoping against hope this is inaccurate: Five dead, four injured. Two shooters, one of them dead.

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Thinking of that gun billboard on the streets of Oakland. Suggested slogan: USE IT TO KILL EVERYONE BECAUSE YOU HATE THE WORLD.

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 “[N]ormal college dude” … a white man with light hair, wearing an orange t-shirt and khaki shorts.

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Apparently the five dead/two shooters report is incorrect.

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I was off by one year: The tyke was just 20. I was right about the funny name: Phoenix Ikner. His parents – they’re in law enforcement and have mucho guns at home, very convenient for their troubled son – gave him [I’ve corrected this; see a later post on Ikner] that wondrous, grandiloquent first name, regarding their babe I guess as a great beautiful mythic bird reborn from its own ashes. They probably didn’t anticipate that he’d reduce everyone around him to ashes. Maybe they were blinded by that name; maybe, less blinded, they would have made an effort to keep him away from guns. They may face prosecution.

As part of their rejection of equality, the foundation of democracy, [the Israeli ultraorthodox] reject the democratic system except in the ways it serves their purposes. Their ministers, MKs, and public all openly clarify that they are obedient to their rabbis and to their interpretation of religious law, not to laws of the state. They have held huge protests against the Supreme Court, whose decisions they do not recognize — unless they serve their community. The Ultra-Orthodox parties are completely subservient to a rabbinical council, much as in Iran — but unlike Iran, lack even a semblance of democratic mechanisms. They vote for whomever they are told to vote, en masse, and according to their ethnic breakdown: Sephardim vote for Sephardi parties, Ashkenazim for Ashkenazim.

… For the Ultra-Orthodox, the state is a foreign body to be milked like a cow, which exists only to serve them, and never the reverse. The expectation they serve in the Israeli army is to them utterly ludicrous. Why should they give their time — heaven forbid, their lives — to a country which is meant to serve them, to defend borders they don’t recognize (God promised them all of greater Israel), alongside people who are beneath them? Worse still, they wouldn’t dream of serving together with women who are impure, or take orders from anyone but their religious leaders...

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Once the Ultra-Orthodox realize their way of life, which is entirely dependent on the generosity of corrupt politicians who buy their support, is untenable and unsustainable, the open and democratic society can begin to incorporate, educate, and accept them. Otherwise, there will be a crisis not only regarding the shortage of soldiers, but of supporting the abundance of children in the huge families, on welfare by choice, whose only competence is in reproduction.

Sing it, sister. But is that even a competence? I think it’s an instinct.

No, that’s Ivory Soap. Suicide attempt by gun is however 90% sure to kill you, which is also an impressively high figure.

[A]ccess to a gun made my dad eight times more likely to die by suicide, primarily because firearms are the most lethal suicide method, according to a 2020 study by researchers at Stanford University. When a gun isn’t available, suicide attempts are typically “not fatal, and most people who attempt suicide do not go on to die in a future suicide,” the researchers wrote. Owning a gun, in other words, can turn an intrusive thought into a death much faster and more effectively. It is impossible, then, not to place some of the blame for my dad’s death on the gun, and to wonder if he would be alive now if he hadn’t inherited it from his grandfather thirty years before...

In the early 1990s, the rates of gun-induced suicides and homicides in America were about equal. But in the three decades since, gun homicides have fallen sharply while the gun suicide rate has remained steady. In 2022, the rate of suicides involving guns in the United States reached the highest level since officials began tracking it more than 50 years ago...

Of suicide attempts using a gun, nearly 90% result in death, while only 4% of suicide attempts by other means are fatal. Because suicidal crises are often short-lived, restricted access to the most lethal self-harm methods saves lives. In states with the strongest firearm safety laws—including background checks, waiting periods, and secure storage requirements—gun suicides fell over the past two decades, while states with the weakest laws experienced a 39% increase…

More than ordinarily nauseating plagiarism story out of the University of Minnesota, this one involving the director of a research unit stealing verbatim an underling’s dissertation prospectus. The director has scurried away from her position at UM, and UM has duly lied to cover its ass (the whole thing was “an honest mistake”), and everyone’s now hoping that the damage has been contained. But you only need to read the injured party’s narrative to know that this repulsive tale ain’t over.

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“Without Hardeman at the helm of CARHE, it appears the future of the research center is in question.” Sounds as though the place has been a mess pretty much from the start, and UD wouldn’t be surprised if UM hasn’t already shut it down.

And remember, as UD has been saying on this blog for ages, plagiarists plagiarize abundantly, promiscuously:

Brittney Francis, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said Hardeman had taken a graphic that Francis made to illustrate the complexities of structural racism and used it in her own presentations and grant applications, without proper attribution or permission.

Not a labyrinth, but a walking circle, around vinca and a crape myrtle. Set among trees in the surrounding woods are chairs, tables, potted plants, wind chimes, small sculptures, and other objects. Xavier and his crew bring various forms of lighting soon. Still to come: Water feature. Fire pit. Etc.

This one’s in Oakland, after all, where guns more than dollars are the neighborhood currency. Might as well transfer that fact from the political unconscious to blaring daylight awareness.

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What do you expect? There are four hundred million guns in private hands in this country.

So what about this

surprises, shocks, amazes, and offends you? Do you think it degrades your neighborhood? Depresses property values? Do you think a miles-long lineup of gun/ammo billboards (broken up by booze and breastaurant ads) would be a bad thing? A bad look?

Or do you just dislike being reminded by a huge roadside graphic that guns blanket your city, with many more always on the way?

You live in the heart of gun culture, babe. Why should billboards confirming that fact bother you? Advertisers advertise to their markets.

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It’s part of this growing trend toward gun ads in general culture (not just in sporting magazines, etc.) media. We’re well past the time the NFL banned a gunny spot meant to run during the Super Bowl. I mean, note who won the presidency. Whole new world. If you’re not ready for billboards along our major highways advertising guns, you might want to get ready.

Epic hosta on its way up in UD‘s garden. Its circular formation makes it look like a miniature, green, Stonehenge.

Here’s what it looked like four days ago.

Today it’s at least an inch higher all around and unfurling has begun.

 Let us defend the liberal democracy that, with all its limitations, continues to signify political pluralism, coexistence, tolerance, human rights, respect for criticism, legality, free elections, alternation in power, everything that has been taking us out of a savage life and bringing us closer – though we will never attain it – to the beautiful, perfect life literature devises, the one we can deserve only by inventing, writing, and reading it…