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In 2015 a sheriff’s deputy in San Francisco named Scott Neu was fired from his job at the county jail. Neu had been accused of being the ringleader in a "fight club" in which he his colleagues forced inmates to fight one another and placed bets on the outcomes. They were threatened with violence from the guards or other punishments like withholding food if they didn't take part.

Ten years earlier three inmates had complained that Neu had sexually assaulting them while in custody. Those cases were settled out of court with a pay out from the city but nevertheless Neu stayed employed.

In 2016 Neu and two others were criminally charged for the fighting ring and the city paid a costly settlement to the victims again. But a couple years later the charges were dropped because "the same sheriff’s department that employed the accused mishandled the investigation and destroyed evidence, including by smashing a lead investigator’s laptop with a hammer because it had gotten a virus," the Guardian reported. What an odd thing to have happened.

There's a happy ending here though because Neu is getting his job back! His union compelled the city to review his case through arbitration and they are legally bound to rehire him as Mission Local reported this week.

It remains unclear if he'll be paid back the $177,458 yearly salary he missed out on for ten years they said. He will have to complete a three week recertification program though.

You may remember last year when there was a spate of shootings around the country over trivial misunderstandings. Two teenagers in Texas that were shot after they accidentally got into the back of the wrong car and a sixteen year old in Kansas City shot in the head after he rang the doorbell at a home he thought he was supposed to be picking up his siblings from and a twenty year old woman killed after she and her friends pulled into the the wrong driveway while lost in upstate New York.

I wrote in April:

Armed and aggrieved with pressure-cooked propagandized brains

Four people were shot in Gastonia, North Carolina on Tuesday including a six year old girl who suffered an injury to her face from a bullet fragment. Her father is still in the hospital with serious injuries. “Why did you shoot my daddy and me? Why did you shoot a

Welcome to Hell WorldLuke O’Neil

Those are just four of the shootings we have cause to know about due to the circumstances being deemed newsworthy enough. There isn't enough space even in the vast breadth of the internet to report on each of the 115 people who have died each day from gun violence so far this year in America. Not to mention the 90 who have merely been injured.

This doesn't happen in other countries. You know this but it's always worth reminding ourselves. Especially shootings like these ones. I don't know what to call them. Casual shootings. Ah fuck it shootings.

Open up your weather app and in the place where it should show the sun or a rain cloud it's just a cute little icon of a bullet now.

Yes other countries are violent in their own ways but people don't have to worry about getting shot over a whoopsie daisy in places where everyone isn't armed and aggrieved with pressure-cooked propagandized brains perpetually on the verge of combusting.

Anywhere else a "oh sorry my bad man" doesn't bring with it the prospect of getting mowed down.

In any case Kevin Monahan the man in New York who shot at the group of cars who pulled into his driveway has been found guilty of second-degree murder. I guess that's good (?) I guess we're supposed to feel good about that.

CBS News reported:

Monahan testified during the trial that he felt like the house he shared with his wife was "under siege" when the revving motorcycle and the two other vehicles pulled up his driveway. He said he fired a warning shot to let the intruders know that he had a gun.

But he said the second, fatal shot was unintentional.

He said he tripped over nails sticking up from the deck, lost his balance and the shotgun struck the deck. That, he said, accidentally caused his gun to fire at the Ford Explorer carrying Gillis.

"I didn't mean to shoot the second shot," Monahan testified last week. "The gun went off."

Not everything is bad however. David Leonhardt – one of the most credulous water-carrying fucks at a paper absolutely chock full of them – has emerged to let the good liberals of the world know things aren't all that terrible in Gaza right now and you can relax a little in case you were starting to think things were going too far.

Only 150 people are being killed a day now Leonhardt says. Or "have died" as he actually puts it. That's thanks to the benevolence of the IDF and Joe Biden by the way both of whom are doing everything they can to protect civilians.

Of course those numbers could get worse due to the complete destruction of the health care system in Gaza and the ongoing starvation and spread of disease. Or as the Times puts it: hospitals are being "squeezed."

Earlier this week Elon Musk toured the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp as a face-saving attempt after he has been rightfully accused of boosting and allowing antisemitic conspiracy theories to prosper all over his social media platform. That would be stomach turning enough but he took the opportunity in an interview with Ben Shapiro while there to suggest that had Twitter existed at the time perhaps the holocaust wouldn't have been as bad as it was.

Mark Wahlberg could never dream that big.

The New Republic explains:

Musk admitted he had been “somewhat naive” about the dangers of antisemitism. But he revealed how little he actually cares by sitting down for an interview with Ben Shapiro, a far-right commentator and conspiracy theorist. The two men then insisted that social media could have prevented the Holocaust from happening.

To prove their argument, Musk showed fake tweets he created of people sharing photos of Nazi attacks on synagogues, supporting Jewish resistance fighters, and pushing back against Holocaust deniers. There was even a tweet from the “official” Auschwitz account claiming Jews there were “thriving”—only to have a community note debunk that claim.

I like how in this alternate history where Twitter is bravely fighting back against the holocaust they still let Auschwitz keep their account up to spread Nazi lies.

What you don't believe in free speech?

Watch the presentation in the post below if you feel like feeling bad. It's one of the more revolting things I've seen in a long time.

Not sure that right now is the moment to argue that posting evidence as one is happening will help stop a genocide but what do I know.

This invented tweet from the presentation for example seems a little too on the nose.

"Two-thirds of my friends are Jewish," Musk said in his talk with Shapiro. "I have twice as many Jewish friends as non-Jewish friends. I’m like Jewish by association."

Here's a poem I just read.

Meanwhile the Los Angeles Times has laid off 115 people this week including a number of my friends and respected colleagues. I wish I could say it comes as a surprise but this is just how it has been going and how it's going to continue to go for the foreseeable future. The degradation of journalism is the same story as every other industry being hollowed out. The talentless do nothing parasite class buys a company and sucks it dry to engorge themselves without regard for what they were supposed to be doing. What they were supposed to be making. Who they were supposed to be informing. They're stewards of nothing but their own hoards of wealth.

Guess I should plug the Flaming Hydra project one more time.

And on top of everything else now I gotta think about this:

At least we got to see Ron DeSantis be finally and utterly humiliated though. We'll always have that.

I went back and read a couple of DeSantis related pieces from the archives to celebrate. This one by Jeb Lund was great if you never read it.

All they had to do was the right thing

Under the unshielded rage of God’s angriest sun

Welcome to Hell WorldLuke O’Neil

I think of how I hold my breath near good people and near vulnerable people in places I am wary of and that we all need to share, and I wonder if we will simply hold our breath for the rest of the year, and if we’ve bargained for standing near each other and holding it for all of the next. And I wish so eagerly that all our suspended futures and the air between us might catch at the throats of those who put us here. That justice for a man like Ron DeSantis might be a permanent and sucking terror: stuck always in an involuntary startled gasp at the sight of responsibility, afraid at the approach of every stranger, incapable of drawing a full and restful breath, and never knowing peace again.

And this one by another Tampa native Gaby Del Valle.

Hope is a wonderful thing to be addicted to

It was very clean and pretty like things often are before you see them in real life

Welcome to Hell WorldLuke O’Neil

Every time I tell people stories about my hometown it sounds like I’m making shit up. One time my mom sent me to Dollar Tree to buy a card for someone who was having a baby shower, and they had this sign near the cashier saying they’re hiring and they’re so sorry about the slow service, but no one wants to work anymore. The old guy ahead of me pointed at the sign and said, “It’s a damn shame,” and then the cashier was like, “Thank god Governor DeSantis got rid of the extra unemployment. Now people will get back to work,” and then the people behind me in line cheered. I swear to god this is true. I swear it’s true even though it sounds like the kind of thing a reactionary would tweet to illustrate some kind of point about the divide between “real America” and the coastal elites. This was in May, when I went home for a month to just kind of dick around, and all I did was tan in my parents’ yard and go to the beach with my friends and run errands for my mom.

Alright I gotta go. Sorry this one kind of fucking sucked. I have been sleeping like shit this week waking up at 3:45 every morning and thinking about everything bad I've ever done all at once. 30 Rock can't save me anymore.

Speaking of The Smiths here's a noisy shoegaze cover of Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me from Indonesia that I really like. What a world.

Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me (The Smiths Cover), by Sunlotus

from the album Fever

SunlotusBandcamp New & Notable Apr 5, 2022