Brian's Friends

A couple of days ago, I wrote about writing Disney a letter – a physical, paper letter, with an ENVELOPE and a STAMP – and went into why those are so. damned. scary. to companies, particularly these days.

Tonight, I’m writing a letter – a physical, paper letter, with an envelope and a stamp – to the local Sinclair propaganda outlet, KOMO-4, over their continued blockade against Kimmel.

I’m not telling them I’m going to boycott them, no. They’re a free/over-the-air station. I don’t pay them. I don’t pay them a dime, why would they care if I boycott them?

Obviously, they wouldn’t.

So instead, I’m telling them I’m going to boycott their local sponsors, and I’m going to write those local sponsors a physical, paper letter, one with an ENVELOPE and a STAMP, and make sure those local sponsors know why.

For every obvious reason, I (and 50501 Seattle) encourage you to do the same. If you’re not in KOMO’s range, that’s fine, find your local Sinclair station and write them, instead.

(But write your own letter, don’t copy mine. They check for that.)

KOMO received enough protest calls today – Tuesday, September 23rd, as I write this – that they shut down their phone system. They went dark.

They can turn off their phones. They can delete their voicemail. And they have, and they did.

So write ’em a gods. damned. letter.

Let’s see ’em shut off USPS delivery.

(Spoiler: they can’t. 😀 )

(eta: Here’s a very good resource thread on Reddit – advertisers, responses, more)

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

I would like to wish all the people who fought with me and sneered at me about how Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris were no better than Donald Trump and sat out the election and encouraged others to do the same a very happy DRINK SOME FUCKING BLEACH:

FBI Readies New War on Trans People
“We’re looking at the entire web”
Ken Klippenstein
Sep 18, 2025

The Trump administration is preparing to designate transgender people as “violent extremists” in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, two national security officials tell me.

…

Under the plan being discussed, the FBI would treat transgender suspects as a subset of the Bureau’s new threat category, “Nihilistic Violent Extremists” (NVEs).

This is, yes, OBVIOUSLY, a duplication of Putin’s moves to designate target groups as “extremist organisations,” whether there’s an organisation or not, as “LGBT” was designated a couple of years ago, leading to the de facto re-illegialisation of LGBT people and large scale prosecutions.

Every other kind of queer is probably gonna be next.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

The grim times we’ve been expecting are here.

Congressman Ronny Jackson (R-TX) calls trans people a virus and a cancer that must be censored, isolated, and imprisoned en masse. It’s a call for genocide, or – as they said during the election – for “eradication.”

Laura Loomer, an important Trump confidante and aide, calls for a Trump dictatorship and mass arrests and prosecution of “leftists” (which for her absolutely includes liberals):

Trump and MAGA are following Putin’s playbook on the media, pushing it either into the hands of ideological compatriots or into silence:

Correct commentary from Mastodon:

Kimmel is about as controversial as a goldfish here. They aren’t serious about it being a problem; the whole •point• is that it’s obviously •not• a problem.

They are using something extremely benign to test the waters of government repression of speech, to see just how much they can get away with — and ABC caved like 3rd-grade toothpick bridge.

It’s relevant that there are mergers in process and it’s clear that Trump would fuck with them if they didn’t pull Kimmel down:

Nexstar Media Group, which is seeking FCC approval for a multi-billion-dollar merger with Tegna, said its ABC affiliates would not air Kimmel’s show before ABC announced its own decision.

Even Karl fucking Rove thinks they’ve gone too far, but that won’t stop them, or even slow them down:

‘They’ Didn’t Kill Charlie Kirk. It insults his memory to blame political opponents for one man’s heinous act.

Meanwhile, Trump demands federal investigations into ‘organized’ Trump protesters – this is also out of Putin’s playbook:

Earlier this week, responding to a conservative reporter who said that anti-war protesters near the White House “still have their First Amendment right,” Trump replied, “Yeah, well, I’m not so sure.”

It’s against this backdrop that Politico reported [that] the Justice Department’s No. 2 official said Tuesday that people noisily protesting President Donald Trump could face investigation if they’re part of broader networks organizing such activities.

Worth reading: Keep An Eye on What We Know (And Don’t) – 15 September 2025 – TPM:

In the current environment I think it’s fair to say there’s really no reason to believe anything we’re hearing from federal law enforcement, either formally or on background to reporters.

Worth reading: Charlie Kirk, Redeemed: A Political Class Finds Its Lost Cause – 16 September 2025 – Vanity Fair / Ta-Nehisi Coates:

It is not just, for instance, that Kirk held disagreeable views—that he was pro-life, that he believed in public executions, or that he rejected the separation of church and state. It’s that Kirk reveled in open bigotry.

Finally, an article and a concept that’s been gaining traction: It’s Time for Americans to Start Talking About “Soft Secession”:

Not the violent rupture of 1861, but something else entirely. Blue states building parallel systems, withholding cooperation, and creating facts on the ground that render federal authority meaningless within their borders.

See also: In the disunited states, conflict and uncertainty rule, which also brings up “Soft Secession,” and I’ve seen people holding signs up about it at protests since the original column came out.

I feel I don’t really have to say, “shit’s bad, folks,” but, well – shit’s bad, folks. If there’s a protest near you, find it, and join it.

They can’t arrest literally everyone, and Trump does chicken out – the only response you can have to him is push back as hard as you can, every time.

And that means right now.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.