Church shooting in Minneapolis

Another mass killing, this time at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis. It was horrifying: the killer opened fire at a group of kids in the school, killing two and injuring 17 before they killed themselves. No more horrifying than every other school/church/public killing with freely available weapons, but one thing will enrage the right wing: the shooter was a trans woman.

It’s more complicated than that, though, although we are already getting the usual fingerpointing at everything but the gun culture.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also confirmed the identity of the suspect, calling Westman a “deranged monster.”

“This level of violence is unthinkable. Our deepest prayers are with the children, parents, families, educators, and Christians everywhere. We mourn with them, we pray for healing, and we will never forget them,” Noem said in a statement.

Yeah, they were a bad person who committed a deeply evil act, but quit pretending it’s unthinkable: it happens all the time, it’s become routine, and all we’re ever supposed to do is “pray”…which never works. We don’t know why the killer snapped, but there is evidence that this was the end result of long-festering issues in this person’s life.

Two videos, posted Wednesday morning and since removed by YouTube, show someone flipping through dozens of pages of notes dated over the course of several months, which include what appears to be doodles of weapons, middle fingers, and expletives. There are also repeated references to killing.

The videos, which depict handwritten journals and a display of high-powered weaponry, paint a portrait of a person with a rambling and deeply nihilistic outlook, according to analyses by law enforcement and ABC News.

The writings in the notebooks and on the firearms, which are written in a blend of Cyrillic alphabet, English and other languages, indicate a series of grievances, anger and ideations of harm to self and to others.

The writings also appear to show overt references to other high-profile school shootings and shooters.

In one notebook, there is a sticker that says “defend equality” with an LGBTQIA flag, overlaid with a gun. A gun also has writings against Israel.

Taking up a full page of a notebook is a hand-drawn birdseye view of the inside of a church with pews. The drawing appears to show the interior layout of Annunciation Church.

In one of the videos the shooter refers to personal depression and apologizes to family members.

“Depression,” “nihilistic,” “grievances” and “repeated references to killing”. This person needed serious help. Were they given any? From this article it’s not clear.

Their mother was retired from a job at the Catholic church, and they’re clearly obsessed with the church, given that they targeted it. I came away from reading about them feeling that a significant problem here was conflict with the church’s position. Maybe rather than blaming transness for the shooting, we should consider Catholicism to be the problem?

Nah, this was a crisis that can’t be pinned to one single cause. Trust me on this though: the media will blame anything but easy access to guns and hateful religious beliefs.

Some people think the innocent are still criminal

Someone named Dewey took exception to my article about a prison being reopened, and quickly fired off a “rebuttal”.

Aw, cry more. Criminals belong in prisons. People who illegally enter homes belong in prison. People who illegally enter businesses belong in prison. People who illegally enter the country belong in prison.

Sure, criminals belong in prison. Listing crimes that get people arrested doesn’t impress me. By the way, he forgot “People who riot and commit violence against the police and vandalize the US Capitol belong in prison.” Or “People who rape women and sexually harass young women belong in prison.” The problem is that these penalties are not justly applied.

Also, people are allowed to enter the country and, for instance, apply for residence or for asylum. Just being in the country doesn’t make a person a criminal.

I’m sure you’d love to completely eliminate the prison system and switch to the honor system, but you’re not in charge, thankfully. Obama was a rockstar who deported over 3 million illegal aliens and did so without the nebulous “due process” you liberals love to whine about.

I’m not lobbying to completely eliminate prisons, but do find it wasteful to reopen prisons that were declared redundant and shuttered over a decade ago. Why reopen a prison unless you’re planning to throw more people into it, in a country with declining levels of crime?

“Due process” is not nebulous. It’s a specific legal process that requires that the state demonstrate criminality and give the accused an opportunity to present their case in court.

Trump probably isn’t competent enough to get even close to that record level of deportations, but any number helps. Beyond him, the people’s minds are changing rapidly. You’re going the way of the dinosaurs. It would be best that you accept that fact.

Why should I accept the fact that injustices are being done? I will oppose them to the end.

I ventured into the jungle…I mean, garden

I was feeling a bit robust this morning, and managed to hobble all the way out to the backyard, where I could explore the fauna thriving there. Mary was hovering at my elbow to make sure I didn’t topple over, but I did OK — another week or two, and I might be going on real walks (as long as I don’t do anything stupid.) Things I saw that made me happy:

We spotted two monarch butterflies flitting over the garden. No photos, though, they didn’t land and pose for me.

The place is hopping with grasshoppers, which, while not normally associated with good gardens, is fine with me — the purpose of the garden is making spider food, not tomatoes. Mary may disagree with me.

Oh, and it was so bright. I’m not used to that anymore.

We also had lots of interesting pollinators, like this two-spotted longhorn bee.

Of course, the queen of the garden, the devourer of grasshoppers, the true monarch, was Argiope trifasciata.

It’s a fine crop, and congratulations to Mary on her superlative gardening skills. Maybe tomorrow I’ll make it to the front yard to see what wonders flourish there.

ICE is digging in like a tick, I see

I thought all we were getting for sacrificing science was a paint job for the border wall, but no! We’re getting more prisons! Overall, crime is down significantly, but we’re expanding the prison system.

There is a small town about 45 minutes south of me named Appleton, that used to be home to a medium security prison that was shut down about 15 years ago. Now the plan is to reopen the facility under ICE control. It’s got 1600 beds, but I’m sure they can easily double that.

I see no advantage to this construction project, except that it means there will be a nearby locus for protests. Also, who knows, as a liberal university professor I could end up staying there sometime! I sure hope they make it clean, comfortable, and luxurious.

There’s a reason Lindsay Ellis is a master of the video essay

She has a new fundraiser-essay, “The Unforgivable Sin of Ms Rachel”. I’ve only seen a half hour of it so far, but it’s magnificent — she is discussing the importance of empathy in raising children and normal human interactions, and is exposing the horrible anti-empathy arguments of conservatives. It’s 2½ hours long, unfortunately, but man, it’s good and thorough. Everyone ought to watch it. Learn more about the anti-Christian sin of empathy, and how the Sermon on the Mount is a crime against Jesus.

It’s also a fundraiser for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. I was motivated to donate.

Baby black widows!

Finally, the black widow egg sacs have released their hordes!

Here’s a close-up of one of the spiderlings. Black widows start off with more spectacular patterns — as they mature, they’ll get red and yellow bands and racing stripes, before turning solid black with a blotch of red on the abdomen.

Pretty!

It’s never going to end…

I’m the executor for my late mother’s estate. Last week I thought I had completed all of my duties. I had liquidated all of my mother’s assets over the course of the past year, and then the final step was calculating the distribution of money, which was reviewed by our lawyer; that final summary was sent to all of the heirs, giving them an opportunity to dispute anything, and they then signed a form and sent it back to the lawyer. I wrote a whole bunch of checks and sent those to the lawyer.

Yesterday was the day the lawyer had received all of the signatures, all dutifully signed, had all of the pre-signed checks, and was going to pop them in the mail, and we’d be all done.

And then…another bill from an insurance company for my mother’s last days in the hospital arrived, for unspecified in-patient treatments, for $770. This was a year ago! The lawyer had posted a public notice last year telling all creditors that this was their last chance to get their final bite of the pie. It took a year to complete the accounting because these bills and claims had trickled in for months.

We thought we were clear. There was a 4 month cut off on claims, but it turns out there’s a medical exemption.

So today I get to recalculate everything with new final sum and rewrite all of those checks and send them to the lawyer. Oh boy.

You’ll never guess who the belated bill that messed up the completion of this chore came from: United Healthcare.

We traded cancer research for a fancy new paint job

The US gutted research institution this year — so far, it has cost us $3.8 billion. What a savings! What shall we do with all that money instead?

How about repainting the border wall? (Which, according to the Cato Institute of all places, doesn’t work.)

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Tuesday that the entire border wall along the southern border with Mexico is going to be painted black to make it hotter and deter illegal immigration — and she credited President Trump with the idea.

Noem spoke during a visit to a portion of the wall in New Mexico, where she also picked up a roller brush to help out with the painting.

She touted the height of the wall as well as the depth as ways to deter people seeking to go over or under the walls. And then Noem said Homeland Security was going to be trying black paint to make the metal hotter.

“That is specifically at the request of the president, who understands that in the hot temperatures down here when something is painted black it gets even warmer and it will make it even harder for people to climb. So we are going to be painting the entire southern border wall black to make sure that we encourage individuals to not come into our country illegally,” Noem said.

The cost for this brilliant redesign is “between $500 million and $3 billion”, or somewhat more than Kristi Noem’s plastic surgery bill. Try not to think about how many research grants that sum could have funded.

Monarchs like our house

Mary has planted lots of milkweed in our yard, and it’s paying off. We keep finding more caterpillars, and we’ve seen as many as a half-dozen butterflies at once fluttering over the tasty field of monarch food growing here.

It’s nothing compared to the swarms we’d see 20-25 years ago, but we’re doing our part to cultivate more.