I didn’t get shot

It was a bad day for a protest: -10°C (what is that in F? about 15,16°), 40km/hr winds, blowing snow, near blizzard conditions, roads slick and icy, yet there they were, a dozen brave individuals standing out there in Cyrus, Minnesota, getting frostbit to protest the criminal regime of corrupt murderers and liars in this country.

Yikes, but it was cold.

We had a few assholes in pickup trucks drive by and make rude gestures, and a few people just stared stonily straight ahead to avoid acknowledging us, but the majority of the passers-by would wave or honk their horns for the cause.

And then I had to drive home and struggle to keep in my lane while the wind tried to push me into a ditch. Worth it, though.

I don’t expect to be shot, but you just don’t know anymore

President Trump has declared that Renee Good was a domestic terrorist. JD Vance has gone into a mode of full time denigration of the victim of the crime, and he has been showing this new camera phone video taken by Jonathan Ross as he murders good; she is smiling and cheerful and assures Ross that she’s not mad at him, and then he shoots her and calls her a “fucking bitch”. MAGA seems to think Ross is vindicated by this.

I’m going to the local protest in Cyrus, about 9 miles from Morris. This is kind of surprising: Cyrus has a population of 300. It’s a tiny, mostly Republican town, and they are hosting a protest march here in rural red state Minnesota? I don’t expect a large crowd at all, but it’s a sign of the president’s fading support that it’s happening there.

Shadows in the snow

I was walking home from the movie theater last night, when I saw the shadows of the trees thrown on the new-fallen snow by the streetlights. I thought it was pretty.

The movie I’d gone to see was Anaconda, the bonkers ‘reimagining’ of the original horror movie Anaconda from 1997, which had been bonkers already. All I can say of the new movie is that it was a goofy bit of fluff that the actors had fun with; I wouldn’t recommend either unless you just want to escape for an hour and a half. One strike against it, though: there is some graphic, brutal butchery of two majestically large CGI snakes.

Many people are turned off if a dog dies in a movie, I hope you feel the same about vicious killings of snakes.

Stare at my wall with me

Since some complained that my atheist creed video didn’t actually show the poster I had found, here — now you can see the poster. I also take a tour of my office wall.

That’s about the most boring thing I could imagine. It’s OK, we’ve had enough excitement here in Minnesota lately.

Tomorrow, though, I’m going to go to a protest nearby in Cyrus, and maybe to one in St Cloud on Sunday. You can look up ICE Out for Good near you and do something to voice your outrage. It’ll accomplish more than looking at a wall.

I’ve always known Robin Ince was a good guy

I used to think the BBC was a pretty good network, too. I’m still right about Robin, but I’m proven mistaken about the BBC — they pressured Robin Ince to resign because he was outspoken about trans rights and neurodiversity. So, fuck the BBC.

Rebecca Watson was curious why Ince’s popular co-host, Brian Cox, had said nothing about this. She dug a bit into that, and has discovered that Brian Cox’s wife, Gia Millinovich, is neck-deep in the British anti-trans movement. I guess that mystery is tentatively solved.

If you aren’t familiar with Robin Ince, my sympathies, you can check out Ince’s and Cox’s Infinite Monkey Cage, which is still lurking within the BBC Earth Science channel on YouTube. Or you can check out the Cosmic Shambles substack.

The obvious comparison

Too on-the-nose? I don’t think so. Lysenko was put in charge of Soviet agriculture after declaring that Mendelian genetics was false, and that his Lamarckist delusions were the future of science. Robert F. Kennedy Jr rejects germ theory and immunology to promote his “miasma theory” bullshit. Lysenko came to power in the 1920s, RFK Jr a hundred years later.

It’s about time we noted the parallels between the two charlatans.

Lysenko’s views and actions have a resonance today when considering the activities of Robert F Kennedy Jr, who was appointed by Donald Trump as secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services in February 2025. Of course, Trump has repeatedly sought to impose his own agenda on US science, with his destructive impact outlined in a detailed report published by the Union of Concerned Scientists in July 2025.

Lysenko set Soviet science back by decades. We should ask how far the similarities will go. It’s not reassuring.

Lysenko retained his position after Stalin died, and was reappointed by Kruschev. His scientific influence was waning — that none of his methods worked led to disaffection in the scientific community, if not so much in the political community. He wasn’t denounced until the mid-1960s (remember Sakharov?) and lingered on in retirement until his death in 1976.

If the parallels hold, let’s hope they don’t, we’re going to be wrestling with the ideological garbage RFK jr infused into American science until the 2060s.

Her name is Renee Nicole Good

The woman shot in Minneapolis was named Renee Nicole Good. She was a wife and mother, and was acting as a legal observer of ICE activities in her city. She was murdered by one of 2000 ICE thugs who had been intentionally deployed to Minneapolis to harass and kidnap people who didn’t look white enough, as part of a campaign by our president to punish the state for voting against him, under the pretext that some people committed fraud in 2020. That fraud case has been in the courts for years, and is being dealt with legally, with many convictions. Having masked, armed men roaming the city does not contribute in any way to the processing of the court case.

Since early December, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection and Homeland Security Investigations – many of them masked and brandishing rifles – have grabbed people at hardware stores and gyms, or outside homes and schools around the cities. They have violently tackled undocumented immigrants as well as US citizens, including advocates and protestors.

By the time Good was shot on Wednesday – in broad daylight, as dozens of bystanders screamed in shock – local leaders and human rights advocates had been bracing for a catastrophe.

But there they are, shooting people.

Meanwhile, Kristi Noem, who was not there, is lying about the events of last night. She calls Renee Nicole Good a domestic terrorist.

An ICE vehicle had become stuck in the snow, Noem said, and officers were attempting to push it out “when a mob of agitators that were harassing them all day began blocking them in shouting at them and impeding law enforcement operations.”
…
ICE officers approached a woman in her vehicle, who Noem said “was blocking the officers in with her car.” She said the woman had been “stalking and impeding their work all throughout the day.”

ICE agents ordered her out of the car, telling her to stop obstructing law enforcement, Noem said. “But she refused to obey her commands.”

“She then proceeded to weaponize her vehicle, and she attempted to run a law enforcement officer over,” Noem said. “This appears as an attempt to kill or to cause bodily harm to agents, an act of domestic terrorism.”

All lies. You’ve seen the video.

It’s going to get worse. ICE is exercising no restraint.

In Minneapolis, residents and organizers were bracing for more violence. Hours after Good’s death, about 3 miles (5km) from where she was shot on Wednesday, armed immigration officers descended on Minneapolis’s Roosevelt high school, tackled people, handcuffed two staff members and released chemical weapons on bystanders, school officials told MPR.

Noem must be impeached, ICE must be disbanded, and Donald Trump…I don’t want to say what should be done with Trump, because what he deserves is not pretty.

Minneapolis is getting ready. This crisis is not over.

A murder in Minneapolis

Today, ICE shot a woman in the face. They have an explanation.

In a post to X, the homeland security department (DHS) insisted the person was a “domestic terrorist” who “weaponized her vehicle” and attempted “to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them”.

The department claimed several ICE officers were hurt, but noted that they are expected to make full recoveries.

“An ICE officer, fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots. He used his training and saved his own life and that of his fellow officers,” the DHS post said.

That’s their story. But…we have video of the event. Watch closely. Look for an attempt to kill officers, rather than get away. Look for ICE officers being hurt. Explain how someone trying to get away from the scene is threatening the lives of the officers. Tell me what “defensive shots” against an unarmed driver are.

The mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, had a few words for ICE.

Frey even issued an emphatic statement to ICE directly: “I do have a message for our community for our city and I do have a message for ICE. To ICE, get the fuck out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety and you are doing exactly the opposite. People are being hurt. Families are being ripped apart. Longterm Minneapolis residents that have contributed so greatly to our city, to our culture, to our economy are being terrorized and now, somebody is dead.

Continued to address ICE, Frey said: “That’s on you. It’s also on you to leave. It’s on you to make sure that further damage, further loss of life and injury, is not done.”

The mayor also noted that DHS is “trying to spin this as an action of self defense. Having seen the video myself, I wanna tell everybody directly, that is bullshit.”

Yeah. GET THE FUCK OUT OF MINNEAPOLIS, THE STATE, AND THE ENTIRE GODDAMN COUNTRY.

In further accounts, she was shot in front of her wife as they were trying to record the ICE agents.