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Bluesky.

Come for the functionality.

Stay for shortage of batshit insanity.

Then get driven back out because a broken bot suspends your account.

Yay! 🤷‍♂️

Note: Yes, I did "congratulate" Mr. Trump,

x.com/chicagolandi...

however briefly, before setting my tweets back to private, as they shall almost always be until Elon is no longer in control of TwitterX.

What we could really use is some really heat put on Congress to put an end to this lunatic's reign of fear and error, before he does any more damage.

Let's get rid of Vance, too.

Surely, if he did such a thing, he'd be removed from office? That's what we thought, yet here we are. The only thing that has changed from his 2017 plans, posted after Mayor Rahm Emmanuel hurt his feelings by mocking him, is that instead of putting the city under occupation, he hit the suburbs.

Being quiet, productive and a threat to nobody, most of us didn't expect that talk about occupying Chicago back in 2017

twitter.com/realDonaldTr...

to ever be anything more than wild talk from an overgrown child who was unfit to lead.

Even those, we're not ready to do. The brutality has descended on places so peaceful, that the locals thought little of leaving their doors unlocked at night, until about ten years ago. We are inexperienced in combat, untrained, and usually, unarmed.

On our own, the best we can do is fade back, hide and begin to prepare to war guerrilla warfare, hoping that we'll never have to carry out such a war.

12.71 million people vs. over 1/3 of a billion are not good odds. The best we can do on our own are hit and run attacks.

Some of us have guns, but if we open fire on ICE, then we're meeting the federal government in battle, in symmetrical warfare, where we could not hope to win, even were the state government and every law enforcement agency in the state to support us.

I guess we're seeing what their kind of support will buy, when one does business with the Rotting Orange.

We need support. The best we can do, for now, is scream in impotent rage at our oppressors, when we don't succeed in running or hiding from them.

ICE, really, seems to be little more than the Ku Klux Klan in disguise, handed badges and granted the backup of the federal government as it goes wild in a place that the White Nationalists (Neo-Nazis in all but name) who've supported Trump have long openly hated.

Anybody could get grabbed and slammed face first into the pavement, beaten and disappeared for any reason or for no reason at all. "Cracking down on the illegals" is but the excuse, a paper thin one when the people being grabbed frequently have south side accents and are obviously native born.

My town has just barely been hit at this point, as we can still avoid the ICE goons by staying out of the mall area in the south, but we know that our turn will come, just as it did for Evanston, and that there will be neither rhyme nor reason in the attacks, when it does.

I know what you're trying to say, Raider, and your support and encouragement is deeply appreciated, at least by me (I know), and I'm guessing anybody else in this area, but it is what it is.

Who got beaten? Who backed up when approached? And who was free to enter another man's car, initiate a beating on camera, and then drive away, only to have his attack declared to be an act of self-defense by the executive wing of the federal government?

The people of Illinois are being oppressed.

"They used the cameras to wrongly accused a woman of a crime, forcing her to find other surveillance video to prove her innocence."

How are they not in prison, after that? They knowingly attempted to imprison an innocent woman. At the very least, they should be charged with perjury.

"A small town police force bragged that citizens 'can't get a breath of fresh air in or out without us knowing' thanks to Flock surveillance cameras."

That really wouldn't be a good thing. That's how tyranny starts.

Loving that picture. Is it your own work, or where did you find it?

I'm about to go out and buy a few bags of candy corn, above and beyond what I intend to pass out to the trick-or-treaters. Yes, deliberately.

I'm from the Midwest. Don't judge me.

Sounds illegal and maybe it is, but a surveillance society can't be our future, if we want there to be any real freedom in that future.

One of my areas of future research interest is Communications Engineering: data transfer. I'm studying that. For the livestreaming to work, a link has to be established between the glasses and an internet server.

Shut down the link, and that ends the stream.

Yay! You're famous?

Any idea of where this live stream was running? If there's interest, when I have time, I might be able to work on something that would jam those glasses.

It's a serious offer.

Just wait until you see how the people in STEM feel, every time he speaks. Or worse, when one of his true believers does.

I've taken to carrying a paper bag with me, just so I'll have something to breath into, if need be.

Their enthusiasm for ICE's tactics might wane after that.

We could let them swagger around, patrolling what has temporarily become a ghost town, rather than give them the violence they seek. While sitting quietly, as those in the usually red areas we've fled to realize that they are, for the moment, outnumbered in homes that have flipped blue.

The best idea that I've heard anybody come up with so far has been to flee Chicago, bring friends, family and neighbors with, and lay low until the crazy masked agents leave, before returning.

We don't want to be violent, but when they grab our neighbors without cause and slam them face first into the pavement just to prove that they can, I wonder what else we're expected to be.

I'm left with the thought that they're trying to provoke us into giving them an excuse for a crack down.

Don't know where you live, but from the standpoint of somebody living in the suburbs of Chicago, this has been unsettling. We don't feel safe here, at all.

ICE has, from what I've heard, acted more like a pack of stormtroopers than like anything recognizable as a law enforcement agency.

That he does. I know that story, and it was horrible.

Common decency can't stand being in the same room as that guy.

The owners of some of those accounts had a lot of followers on Twitter, who saw them publicly announce that they were going over to Bluesky, and give links to their new accounts.

Not really that mysterious.

Having interacted with narcissists, before, I recognize the behavior.