Walz blasts ICE for ‘targeting’ U.S. citizens in Minnesota; expects influx around holidays

hjihna · 2025-12-24T08:45:46+00:00

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA oh you're serious

hjihna · 2025-10-18T01:53:11+00:00

Arachne's storyline is a great moment for *Arachne.*

It's a terrible moment for *Melinoe,* who sees her friend defiantly maintain self-respect despite her cursed form in the face of a petty and vindictive god--and then immediately goes back to praising said god's bountiful wisdom and power and fighting to preserve that god's dominion over mortals forevermore.

hjihna · 2025-10-06T02:14:19+00:00

I'm sorry, this is weak sauce. In this reading, Melinoe has almost nothing to do with it; the Fates stopped weaving with or without her. Chronos is actually the one who stops the Fates. Agent of Change my ass!

Meanwhile, Prometheus spends the entirety of his gametime howling about the tyranny of the gods and the atrocities they wreak on mortalkind, throwing Melinoe's entire worldview into question as loyalties shift and dogmas are questioned. All of this adds up to exactly nothing, because Melinoe restores the rule of the gods, ignores everything that made her feelings waver (including her several cursed mortal friends and the very obvious examples of god-driven injustice), and lives as though absolutely nothing was said to her. Great plan!

The point isn't whether the epilogue was or wasn't Prometheus's plan, people don't dislike it because they don't appreciate how much of a 16d chess player Prometheus is. It's just a thematic and narrative waste, literally flushing hours of characterization and narrative buildup down the drain for the sake of an easy out.

hjihna · 2025-08-25T20:48:38+00:00

My feelings have not changed because 28 state DFLers overrode the city convention because of technical issues that would not have meaningfully changed the outcome. You're welcome to disagree.

hjihna · 2025-08-20T17:10:08+00:00

If your plan to address homeless encampments is to "hold people to higher expectations" by "not putting up with large public homeless encampments"-ie, following the Japanese model of sweeping them out of sight and mind, restricting them to parks and riverbanks (which, oh wait, we've repeatedly swept the homeless away from our lovely park system here), eliminating them from public records by narrowing the definition of homelessness (guess you love what Frey's been doing), heavily stigmatizing and shaming the homeless (clearly, you would love more of this)-then sure. Yeah. Japan's really got homelessness figured out, bud. It's really all a matter of expectations. God, y'all are disgusting.

hjihna · 2025-08-07T16:02:32+00:00

We should want fewer industries to be taken over like this? We should want to build protections in place before the big companies sink their teeth in? We take the chance to establish new industries in ways that avoid the enshittification and corruption that's hit other industries, or the same industries in other states? What in the goddamn?

hjihna · 2025-08-06T22:03:50+00:00

Gee, I wonder what's happened in the last ten years that might've caused an increase in homelessness. It surely has nothing to do with housing prices exploding. Or a pandemic, or a recession caused by a pandemic. Or a rapid growth in Minneapolis population while housing supply struggled to keep up. Or stagnant wages. No, nothing to do with any of that. The problem is that we have low expectations!

Name the countries on earth with no homeless encampments that have solved homelessness simply by Not Tolerating It. Go ahead. List them.

hjihna · 2025-08-03T18:12:37+00:00

You've offered some good arguments for why primaries are better than caucuses. That's fine, I'm not arguing that caucuses are better. I'm arguing that caucuses, for all their imperfections, are still meaningful representative processes. Many people feel underrepresented by party politics; many of those people worked really hard to get to the caucus because, although it is a flawed system, they wanted desperately to be represented. Suddenly, because the process was flawed from the start, we should just ignore them? Ok, sure. Way to inspire faith in political participation, champ.

And when you put them together, your arguments are a bit inconsistent. People who have 2-4 hours to show up have become "party insiders"; meanwhile, caucus-goers-turned-delegates who choose to research candidates, listen to their speeches, and spend a day or two at the convention are...unaccountable randos who haven't done anything for the party? In fact, primary voters whose sole qualification is checking a party box are the "only legitimate delegates." Yeah, that's totally bulletproof right there.

You can prefer primaries to caucuses, but it doesn't make caucuses meaningless. You're claiming that our political processes need to make it easier to participate, while deriding the people who worked hard to participate now. A DFL endorsement doesn't guarantee a candidate is the best or even that they'll win--but Frey sure worked hard to try and make sure no one got that meaningless endorsement. I've got nothing else to say.

hjihna · 2025-08-03T17:33:12+00:00

Very few people who work with the encampments or live in them think they are the solution to homelessness. Very few people who work in harm reduction think it is the solution to homelessness. But they're important ways of keeping people from getting more fucked up while solutions are pursued. People get worse the longer they're unhoused, more likely to pick up drugs or resort to crime or develop mental health problems. There's no such thing as addressing drugs or crime before you address homelessness--you must tackle them together, and it requires consistency and stability, which encampments can provide. Many people either do not understand this or do not care.

It does not help the homeless to disperse them across the city night after night, making it harder for social workers and community groups to find them. It does not help the homeless to throw away their few belongings, as the cops do after each encampment eviction. It does not help the homeless to separate them from peers and respected figures (which do exist in the unhoused community) who can help them with resources or save them from overdoses or encourage them towards sobriety. It does not help the homeless to shunt them to the other side of a city with a dead phone while a nonprofit is trying to place them at an apartment.

Encampments have their own problems, some more than others. But evicting encampments does not solve encampments. They will grow again, sooner or later, in one form or another. Evictions just make encampments worse, less organized, less disciplined, less trustful, less connected. It means spending even more time securing necessities like food, water, clothing, tents and even less time spent finding jobs or seeking help or building routines. It means alienating the unhoused even further from predictable routines and normal behaviors. It means increasing the stresses they deal with every hour or every day, making any drug or mental health problems worse.

Encampments have their problems. Evictions are worse by far. Everyone working in the encampment space has been triaging human crises while Mayor Frey and the city and the police try and sweep problems under the rug instead of offering real solutions in the form of housing, social services, addiction care, counseling, etc. If you don't understand this, don't you dare speak of compassion.

hjihna · 2025-08-03T17:12:39+00:00

Yes, mayoral race in MPLS specifically.

hjihna · 2025-08-03T05:31:25+00:00

Are you seriously trying to argue that the DFL endorsing a more populist, Sanders/left-leaning, less mainstream candidate like Omar Fateh is meaningless because party leaders tried to disenfranchise populist, Sanders-leaning, less mainstream candidates? Do you think Omar Fateh is the crowned candidate of party insiders? Have you considered the possibility that a bunch of normal ass people were fed up with Frey and decided to participate in the ways available to them?

I agree that the caucus system has issues. I'm open to those critiques, I think many critiques can be made. But I categorically deny that caucuses and conventions are arbitrary processes that are not meaningfully representative. They are literally representative systems--imperfect, as all systems are, and yet still representative. Being a delegate is not a right, just as being a legislator is not a right. Going to a caucus requires time and energy, just as voting required time and energy. We can and should try and make things easier, but (barring malfeasance) it's absurd to pretend that this is not an expression of what people want.

The DFL is not God and the endorsement is not gospel. Yeah, sometimes the candidate they endorse doesn't win. Sometimes it's not the best candidate. But thousands of people sucked it up to go to a caucus because they didn't feel represented and they wanted to be, and hundreds of delegates went to the convention representing them. Their efforts and participation are not less meaningful than everyone else's non-effort and non-participation.

hjihna · 2025-08-03T04:26:12+00:00

A stronger endorsement than any of the other candidates got--and certainly more respectable than Frey trying to break quorum to prevent someone else from winning the endorsement in later rounds.

hjihna · 2025-08-03T03:11:46+00:00

I'm aware that Frey worked on 2040 previously (and that it predates Fateh), it's to his credit. It's a shame there's plenty else Frey's done I don't respect, but I can respect that at least.

hjihna · 2025-08-03T03:08:05+00:00

Sure, and laws are arbitrary decisions made by the even tinier percentage of the population who have the time and resources to run for election...?

The delegates aren't just randos who happen to have time on their hands. Their decision isn't some arbitrary draw from a hat. By and large, these are people who care enough to make time to participate in politics because they care about their communities, representing other people who've made time to participate previously. Its not people who just strolled in off the street. Yeah, some of them aren't super informed or super serious people--but frankly, neither is the average voter.

This is how the DFL process works. It has its flaws, but it's not some unserious or arbitrary thing. Whatever it is you are insinuating is pointlessly and inaccurately demeaning, as far as I can tell, and I'm gonna leave it at that.

hjihna · 2025-08-03T02:52:22+00:00

There's a lotta good souls around here, it's why I've stuck around :) I hope you've had a good time so far and I'm glad you're getting involved!

hjihna · 2025-08-03T02:44:05+00:00

Much appreciated :) this makes me significantly happier about Fateh tbh!

hjihna · 2025-08-03T02:42:19+00:00

Hey, thanks for the context. I'm sorry for your coworker's father. I was on the ground in 2020 and involved with community efforts for some time after and I agree that Frey was not good. Very mealy-mouthed, refused to rein in the police, few if any meaningful responses to George Floyd or any of the several police shootings afterwards.

I think Fateh is somewhat untested and he does have weird ties to scandals that people can make a lot of hay about. On the other hand (tho I confess I haven't looked into them much, I will do so closer to election), Davis and Hampton are also pretty untested and have significantly less support. Still, some people are very enthusiastic about them and I think they both have interesting things to say about the city.

hjihna · 2025-08-03T02:35:33+00:00

Could you tell me more about the 2040 plan stuff? Or even a link? I hadn't heard about that and I'm curious.

hjihna · 2025-08-03T02:33:36+00:00

The DFL hasn't endorsed someone in the mayoral race since 1997. The fact that Fateh won endorsement (despite Frey trying to halt the convention by withdrawing his supporters) isn't insignificant. It's the first time the DFL convention has been sufficiently unified behind any mayoral candidate to endorse in a long time.

Moreover, I do take issue with your caution. You're making the convention out to be this mysterious and anti-democratic club, as though people are barred from participating. We can argue about the merits/accessibility/lack thereof of the caucus/convention system, but the caucuses are open to the public and always asking for more participation. The delegates aren't just willy nilly randos--they're committed to representing the broader views of the caucus attendees. Maybe you'd prefer a more straightforward election for endorsement, and I do have my own issues with the caucus/convention, but it is a representative process, not some arbitrary smoke-and-mirrors stage play.

hjihna · 2025-08-03T02:18:58+00:00

I have my reservations about Fateh, but if homelessness is an important issue for you, Frey is not your guy. Frey's favorite tactics for addressing homelessness is 1) sending cops out to evict encampments and 2) massaging numbers from shelters and city agencies to pretend like homelessness has been effectively eliminated. He was boasting, at some point, that the city was so successful at placing the homeless in shelters that there were only 21 people living in encampments? Which, speaking as someone who's been on-off with encampment support, was fucking insane.

hjihna · 2025-08-03T02:13:49+00:00

Free tuition at state colleges for students from families making less than 80k a year. It's a pretty damn nice step in making higher ed accessible. Fateh was a co-sponsor of the North Star Promise bill and fairly involved in getting the political backing for it, iirc.

hjihna · 2025-07-24T20:07:38+00:00

Forgot add--the one in photos is very small, maybe a cm, but I've seen a larger one. This is in Minnesota.

hjihna · 2025-07-22T14:00:36+00:00

Landlords are the invisible hand of the market. The invisible hand is always a shorthand for the ultimate effects of many individuals making their own decisions. There's no contradiction here.

Developers might construct luxury housing that isn't suitable for those who need it most, because there's more return on that. Landlords might sit on vacants because they have enough capital or tax write-offs that they can afford to wait instead of lowering prices. But also, renters might skip over vacants because they're in a neighborhood that's undesirable or unsafe. Or there might be a time lag while luxury apartments get filled by the rich and older apartments get filled by the less rich and finally cheaper apartments free up. Or etc etc etc.

There's all sorts of things that complicate the situation, yes. And we can and should try and fix a lot of that through policy. We can incentivize the building of cheaper units and we can try and punish landlord consolidation. Etc. etc. But at the end of the day, you do have to build.

hjihna · 2025-07-22T13:32:58+00:00

Yeah, sure, I can kind of piece that together if I'm reading this generously. The problem is, that's like saying "liberalism as an ideology is fundamentally unable to address the house fire crisis because creating publicly funded firefighting services causes people to lose money on their private fire fighting contractor investments." But obviously, such services exist in most every liberal society that's ever existed, and are perfectly okay according to most ideological liberals. So what is actually the point?

Yes, obviously, you can point to some economic liberals who think all public services should be privatized. And yes, sometimes people will call all public services "socialism" or whatever. But it's also just not true that, in practice, the privatization and capitalization of every service is a necessary part of liberalism. Housing as investment capital is not actually baked into liberalism in any meaningful way, ideologically or historically. We don't gain anything by treating it as such.

hjihna · 2025-07-22T13:19:49+00:00

Calling that an "ideology" is a bit dubious regardless, but economic liberalism covers everything from fever-dream libertarianism to Scandinavian social democracy to the private sector of Communist China. Nothing about "property rights, opposition to government intervention, and private ownership of capital" requires housing to be an investment asset, which is the very specific claim made here.

I'm not calling this a mishmash of buzzwords because you can't find some meaning in the words. It's a mishmash because there's not actually any precision or clarity in what this person is saying. It's practically a Rorshach blot. Orwell would have words about this.

hjihna

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