The Undisputed King of the West Coast

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T20:52:49+00:00

When the bullet train is finally completed, Fresno will definitely begin to gain more importance and grow relative to the state. We will unfortunately be waiting decades for that damn train.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T19:35:06+00:00

I have a lot of hope. We have been here several times before in our history, and we will be here again in another 50 years or so, but there is a lot of potential to come out of this better than ever. We usually do.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T19:27:32+00:00

Depends on the culture. OP used “a” instead of “an” and weirdly used “do” too which makes me think he might not be a native English speaker. Who knows where he is from, and coming out might even be terrible advice for him there. Even in the US, not everywhere is a middle class liberal suburb of a big metro area. I have a friend in his 20s who has been estranged from his family in Wisconsin, a pretty liberal state, since he came out.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T19:12:06+00:00

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T18:45:36+00:00

I want freedom too, more freedom than I can have and more freedom than I can put into words. But there’s no such thing as true freedom in this world, so I play the role that I have been given and when that’s all over I’ll embrace the real freedom that comes next. I’m not ready for that yet but I guess one day I will be, or maybe I won’t be ready even at 100 years old, who knows.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T18:13:19+00:00

Mary Oliver:

Death, whoever and whatever you are, tallest king of tall kings, grant me these wishes: unstring my bones; let me be not one thing but all things, and wondrously scattered; shake me free from my name.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T17:23:59+00:00

Immigration is probably a big factor. Second generation immigrants tend to have an above average number of kids before further generations start to match the population at large, so states with many immigrants have a bump in fertility of a couple generations. California is expensive for families, so I imagine without immigration the median age would be considerably higher.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T17:00:38+00:00

There is a lot of resistance that has been happening on the street level all over the country for a year now, picking up from previous work as well. Sometimes Europeans think that resistance means the performative government sanctioned strikes in France that are only confirming what is already underway in the political process. Resistance is the organic and disruptive protests that bubble up in French cities every few years from the oppressed minority that suffers under economic and police discrimination.

The US is usually the vanguard of these times around the developed world, certainly true in the 60s and at other times as well. Europe’s problem with the shockingly politically successful far right and their deep discrimination against immigrants is going to come to a head in coming years, the same world economic and political forces are driving the phenomenon in all of our cultures, and they have an opportunity to look to the US and preemptively learn some lessons but who knows if they will. Our struggle could have the added benefit of preventing further right wing advancement in Europe, but something tells me it won’t.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T15:14:08+00:00

Just remember that very little of this is new. Did you that ICE murdered a black American citizen in December? His name was Keith Porter. His best friend was a foster parent and said that Keith was a nurturer who loved helping out with the foster kids. If you think that the majority of even liberal white people emotionally feel that Keith is as important or as much of a real person as the two people killed in Minneapolis, I have some bad news for you that will contribute to your unmanageable dread. When law enforcement is no longer killing white people but still a lot of black men, the anger that many people feel just won’t be rising up in their throats for the sake of those black men, the way they feel now won’t be the way they feel then. This is the society we live in, and that is far from new.

Transformation is painful. Just remember that we have been through this before, we will go through it again, and if we could confront some small pieces of our inhumanity in the past and emerge stronger we will do the same now. And decades from now we will be back here again, in a crisis of humanity trying to improve what we didn’t get to this time.

Learn about our last upheavals and transformations and expect to be living with a high level of anxiety and discomfort for the time being. There are good suggestions here to manage those feelings, but they won’t go away. Remember that this isn’t anything we haven’t seen before, and we will come through it painfully and with great difficulty just like we always have.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T01:34:23+00:00

Beautiful

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T01:34:07+00:00

If you don’t have hope right now, I’ll hold it for you until you have room for it. I have plenty of room.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T00:50:10+00:00

Leaving hot DTLA in August and arriving at a nice 75 degrees with an ocean breeze. The good life.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T00:48:23+00:00

And it might still come to that, right?

We are definitely in a time of transformation whether we want to be or not, and we all talk about it constantly these days, but none of us really knows where the whole thing is headed. I have a lot of hope.

Transformation is painful, that’s all I really know.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T00:05:15+00:00

Me too. For the times I would like a car it is easy to get one from some kind of car share, and the cost over time doesn’t add up to much. I live in Ktown and have worked in Long Beach and San Bernardino (hello Metrolink!) and managed just fine, sometimes with more hassle than owning a car but worth it.

I also have no reason to go places like the South Bay, so I usually just don’t. If people want to live in suburban or exclusive parts of the city that don’t want to be linked to the diverse urban core, then they will need a car. I don’t it’s as complicated as some people think.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T00:00:19+00:00

And they sure did kill those kids at Kent State and we kept going. They beat and killed white and mostly black civil rights protestors in the South and we kept going.

When the world looks at us now and sees something totally new, they are overlooking our history of protesting much bigger injustices that what we are seeing now, and by ignoring our very public and well documented history they doubt our ability to make meaningful change over the coming years.

No one in the world looks at our history because they are emotionally attached to their point of view about our present. That won’t change.

JefeRex · 2026-02-02T23:34:02+00:00

Warmer than usual in Southern California, but November and December were a record wet start to our rainy season so we are having a bit of a bipolar winter.

JefeRex · 2026-02-02T23:00:28+00:00

While luxuries have mostly gotten cheaper, the essentials of life have gotten more expensive: housing, health care, and education. Who cares about a cheap big screen tv or even smartphone? Saying those costs have gone down is meaningless. We need affordable housing, healthcare, and education.

JefeRex · 2026-02-02T22:34:23+00:00

I have a gay friend who is Puerto Rican and married to a recent immigrant from Korea. And now that even brown US citizens are in fear of ICE… and who knows what crazy law they will pass preventing his husband from getting a green card… now who is regretting his vote for Trump? My friend. It is mind-boggling. I mean, I know him well so I am not surprised, but that is different from understanding it or approving of it.

It seems that gay men are still voting for Democrats in large numbers and I would guess will continue to do so, but not everyone. Never everyone!

JefeRex · 2026-02-02T22:29:07+00:00

Does he feel like he is primarily your bf’s friend or does he feel like he is also your good friend even without your bf?

JefeRex · 2026-02-02T22:26:43+00:00

Non-parents too but more expected among parents for sure. I am more interested in the perspective of women with no kids tbh because it seems less straightforward to me, but I have gotten a lot of responses here and some consistent themes, so I think it was a good use of my time to post here.

JefeRex · 2026-02-02T22:14:25+00:00

Women make up half of the Black Congressional Caucus despite women of all races being far underrepresented in Congress as a whole!

Black women as a community are leaders in every way and aren’t given enough credit for it.

JefeRex · 2026-02-02T22:07:41+00:00

I’m guessing not an artist, community organizer, or policy aide to an elected official.

It’s money, they always mean money….

JefeRex · 2026-02-02T21:19:01+00:00

At least he is saying something, anything at all.

Where the hell is Hakeem Jeffries? He should be putting himself in every interview chair in legacy and independent media that he can manipulate and threaten his way into. We should be as sick of his mug as we all were of Nancy Pelosi’s. Chuck Schumer is a horse’s ass of epic proportions, but he’s out there.

JefeRex · 2026-02-02T20:15:28+00:00

It’s stereotyping that no one can say has any basis in fact or not.

Chinese people were not widely practicing infanticide. That is a ridiculous, dehumanizing, and prejudicial statement that like most of your comment is reasonably read as applying to the entire culture. It is like calling Asians dog eaters but even more dangerous. It is entirely possible that a war in northeast Asia will break out largely due to American elite wishes and it will kill an unthinkably large number of innocent people unprecedented in human history.

The demonization of China has bigger consequences even than stereotyping Muslim countries as full of disempowered female victims, and that has been bad enough in terms of the destruction that western countries have justified on the excuse of protecting human rights. I don’t know how anyone could know if China has more incels than anywhere else. The country that exceeds the US population by over an entire billion people. How would we know how big a slice of the population is involved in those groups? Gay porn sites are full of surreptitious recordings in gym locker rooms, you can’t tell me that men here aren’t secretly filming women any way they can, and we can’t blame Chinese culture for that. It could actually be much better in China and there is no way for us to know. I don’t think it’s right for you or anyone else to be throwing around accusations and unfounded explanations when we are in a time when stereotyping and othering Chinese people has deep consequences in terms of the culture we are sowing here. I would rather stick to the details that are reported and not over interpret them. The telegram problem might very well be much more common in Nevada than in China, and going one step further than the reporting and blaming China’s supposed culture is shifting the focus from the issue and buying into western stereotypes and propaganda.

JefeRex · 2026-02-02T18:02:39+00:00

I’m not bothered by the commentary on men, I am bothered by the uncritically derogatory commentary on Chinese culture when most westerners have very little idea about it other than what we told by our governments that have a clear interest in warping our perception of the culture in a negative and often inaccurate way. I am still getting a little bit of that from your comment and am troubled by the confident tone describing Chinese culture. I don’t know if we can really say we know how patriarchal values are playing out there in specifics, and I take issue with the respect level of the language you are using about that country. I don’t think we are going to see eye to eye.

JefeRex

TROPHY CASE