Zoom Chron Blog

When I wrote this post about the movie, 3 Days of the Condor, based on the book pictured above, I missed something huge: James Grady was living in Missoula when this book was published in 1974.

How could I have missed this?

As a free-lance journalist living in Montana during this period it’s entirely possible Mr. James Grady interacted with Mr. John Talbot, the “former” CIA man turned newspaper guy long-time readers of the blog will be very familiar with, along with his son, Mr. bourbon-enthusiast, Pete.

The now-vacant building (and some day massive condo project) where Missoula’s newspaper once rolled out is located on Higgins. Now that I know Grady lived in Missoula, it makes much more sense that the CIA Agent who goes after Redford’s character in the movie, Turner, is named “Higgins”. Here’s some of the Dialogue (near the end):

Putting aside the synchronistic fact I lived on “Turner Ct.” when I first moved to Missoula, Higgins (the main street through downtown) is a name I have discovered echoing in particularly curious places, which I will demonstrate next with excerpts from Leslie Fiedler’s book, Being Busted

For Leslie Fiedler’s own, admitted historical context on being published by a publication that got CIA funding, along with his impression of “The Company” shifting focus during the time period he challenged the University of Montana President, here are some key passages from “Higgins Avenue: 1958”:

During WWII, from 1943-45, Leslie Fiedler, “served as a Japanese interpreter and military cryptologist in the U.S. Naval Reserve” according to Wikipedia. Fiedler also mentions the book The Catcher in the Rye in Being Busted. Curiously, I also came across a reference to Catcher in the Rye in Grady’s book while looking for something else.

There is a lot packed into this page of Grady’s Condor, starting with the character with a philosopher’s name (Heidegger and his notorious Nazi problem), and ending with Catcher in the Rye. To avoid getting distracted, I’ll move on to other examples of “Higgins”, starting with the hippie protestor, Summer.

In Season 4, Episode 5, titled “Under a Blanket of Red,” a group of protestors (technically, environmentalists, though they’re portrayed more as people who just thinking killing animals is mean) ruin John Dutton’s day. The leader of the pack, Piper Perabo’s Summer Higgins, is arrested after getting into a scuffle during the protest, quickly bailed out and seduced by John (as evidenced by the fact that she’s wearing his shirt, and nothing else, after spending a night at the ranch) and later, ends up in jail again after being manipulated by Beth, who doesn’t like that her Dad had sex. To make an example out of Summer, the judge sentences her to some serious prison time — a fate even the all powerful John Dutton couldn’t make go away entirely. 

Of course, this was before he was governor (and had the ability to hand out pardons or commute sentences). According to Perabo, Season 5 has more in store for the couple. “The love story is kicking into gear,” she said at a pre-show for The 28th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards pre-show following Season 4, adding “We’re turning up the heat.

Taylor Sheridan might be easy to take shots at, but I’ve been re-thinking his Yellowstone horsey-porn in light of his script-assist on the movie, Sicario, directed by Denis Villeneuve–a director I’ve recently binge-watched for an essay on his entire filmography I’m working on. And it’s because of this type of cultural analysis that I’m familiar with another character named Higgins, George Anthony Higgins to be specific, but his snuff-handle in the movie, 8MM, is “Machine”.

Speaking of machines and men in leather gimp-masks, I feel called by to point out that the leader of America’s WAR machine just made some recent and unnecessary headlines by approximating a fake prayer from Pulp Fiction. Amazing.

“The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of camaraderie and duty shepherds the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother, and you will know my call sign is Sandy 1 when I lay my vengeance upon thee. Amen.”

Returning to Higgins, one of the many local books I have collected over the years places an important figure in the development of University culture, H.G. Merriam, directly on Higgins, arriving in Missoula by train, to ensure a pipeline to Rhodes Scholar elitism could be established and maintained:

H.G. stepped off a train at the depot at the north end of Higgins Avenue in 1919, ready to take on the chairmanship of the English department. He brought with him his wife, Doris, and two degrees from Oxford, where in 1904 he had been in the first class of American Rhodes Scholars.

He was surprised to find UM had sent no Rhodes Scholars to Oxford from 1905 to 1919, and became the secretary of the Montanan Rhodes Scholar Selection Committee. UM to this day has a strong presence among Rhodes Scholars, an effort H.G. Shepherded long past his retirement in 1954.

While trying to find the above quote I came across some history about the University of Montana and another glaring data point I had been previously totally oblivious to: the University of Montana, where I was a student on September 11th, 2001, first opened its academic doors on September 11th, 1895.

The students were the second human asset of the new University. At the opening exercises they numbered about 50, only five of them prepared for college work, but by the close of the academic year they numbered 135. All students must be thirteen years of age, “well grounded in the elements of an English education,” whatever that meant, and successful in an entrance test, which determined the degree of preparation. Here, then, they were, all 135 of them, young prankish, exuberant, serious, proud of being in a university. They were pioneers as their grandparents or parents had been. They too were making history.

These, then, were the assets of the University of Montana, material and human, as it opened its doors on that good day, September 11, 1895.

To bring this back around to the movie, 3 Days of the Condor, I pointed out in my original post from 2023 that this movie was the first, if not the only, major motion picture to use the Twin Towers as a location for filming.

Pretty damn interesting, considering what happened. For a little more context, here’s Sydney Pollack explaining his rationale for why he thought it made sense for the Twin Towers to be the location for CIA office space:

Yes, “perfect”, like well-crafted lines in a movie scene.

Boy does this stuff hit different in April, 2026.

Yeah, don’t get lost in those New York Streets, especially if you’re performing in a fly-fishing musical.

END SCENE!

The final Higgins for this post comes from StoryHouse, the film production company recently profiled by the New York Times. Before Sean Patrick Higgins starts scooping up public money, I think Missoula needs to get better acquainted with him and his dreams for our valley:

The owners of a production company, Story House, said they planned to open a film and television studio with multiple soundstages that would create more than 400 jobs in Missoula within six years and build an ecosystem robust enough that filmmaking talent there wouldn’t have to leave the state to find work.

The founders, James Brown III and Sean Patrick Higgins, had initially planned a similar venture in Wyoming, but legislative efforts to pass a film tax incentive in that state failed. So they moved their studio project northwest to Missoula to take advantage of Montana’s tax credits for film and television production.

State Representative Mark Thane, a Democrat who had championed the tax credits in what is called the MEDIA Act, said he welcomed Story House’s presence.

While Democrats like Mark Thane eagerly throw tax credits at this Yale-trained actor, I’d like to conclude this post with a 1981 quote from William Casey, the former Director of the CIA:

“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

Are we there yet, Billy?

Thanks for reading!

I took this picture yesterday on a piece of private property that will someday be condos, but right now it just has garbage everywhere because the owner, Cole Bergquist, doesn’t care enough to secure fencing or lock the gates. If you’re a homeless person this is a great spot to live, and if you’re inclined to do drugs and commit crimes, what better spot than a centralized location downtown with convenient access to the bike trial?

The $1.2 million dollars spent on implementing the “urban camping” ordinance in Missoula only addresses camping on PUBLIC land, not private. For private land it’s common to see “no trespassing” signs to message the state law that becomes more enforceable when clearly visible signage is used. That’s because that statute uses the word “knowingly”. Here’s the language of the trespassing statute (45-6-203):

Prohibits knowingly entering/remaining on private property or in structures without authorization. A conviction can result in a 24-month revocation of hunting, fishing, or trapping privileges.

Before I found that tattered Bible in a bush, I was rummaging through a nasty encampment under a walking bridge that spans one of Missoula’s irrigation ditches, also private. The Orchard Homes Ditch Company, established in 1906, is the entity that will have to clean up this mess before the irrigation water starts flowing.

Pictures of what I like to call “reality” can be annoying, especially when you just paid $1.2 million dollars for an urban camping policy that only provides a bandaid on systemic failure. Well, since using a word like “failure” has a negative connotation to it, let’s read a little about the supposed “success” of the urban camping ordinance:

Top Missoula officials described the city’s urban camping law as a “success” for reducing impacts in public spaces, although some criticized the ordinance for not providing better outcomes for homeless people.

In 2025, the Missoula Police Department cited 172 people for either sleeping on public streets or on public property under violations of the urban camping law, Police Chief Mike Colyer told the city council on Wednesday.

The law dictates when, where and how people can sleep on city property, largely restricting camps near homes, parks, shelters, schools, waterways and city trails.

“Waterways”, you say? I wonder if a privately-owned irrigation ditch can be defined as a “waterway”. Maybe I should give the Orchard Home Ditch Company a call, though my past experience is that they are notoriously non-responsive to this particular problem.

The larger problem of drug and alcohol abuse got almost totally excluded from Wednesday’s conversation about urban camping until Kevin Davis pointed out the obvious factor driving “urban camping”, which is DRUG AND ALCOHOL ABUSE. For readers unfamiliar with Davis’ work along the Reserve Street corridor, this KGVO article from 2024 highlights his experience of helping REMOVE one of Missoula’s largest encampments and KEEPING IT REMOVED.

About 20 individuals joined Kevin Davis and his Reserve Street Public Working Group on Tuesday as they celebrated Earth Day by taking a tour of the former Reserve Street Homeless Camp, both picking up leftover trash and enjoying the return of wildlife to the habitat.

I spoke to Davis on Wednesday who said it was gratifying to see the immense changes in the Reserve Street Bridge habitat since the long-time homeless camp was finally removed.

“As part of our advocacy for Missoula’s busiest corridor, the Reserve Street corridor, we do return to the Reserve Street Bridge area at least once a year, over the last six years to do a cleanup of that area,” began Davis. “Yesterday was a very successful event, and in the 30 years I’ve lived in Missoula, it’s the healthiest I’ve seen the area.”

I was very involved with the renewed energy Kevin Davis brought to this sprawling encampment terrain where lots of bad things happened–including the execution-style murder by the apparent serial killer, Kevin Lino, who I tried helping local authorities catch, which they failed to do–and the reason I was so involved is because outgoing director of United Way of Missoula, Susan Hay Patrick, did her best at the time to discourage Kevin Davis from becoming involved in cleanup efforts as a private citizen.

For an idea of how bad it was, this image represents how many campers were expressing their feelings at the time, and that was through the rampant arson of other people’s camps.

Ok, so why did I include “demons” in the title of this post?

We’re almost there, but first recall how I recently reexamined the LifeGuard Group, run by Missoula County Sheriff Chaplain, Lowell Hochhalter and family, and recall how I connected anti-trafficking efforts by this “Christian” family to things like Epstein and Charlie Kirk.

With that in mind–and when you understand the kind of things I’ve had to learn quite painfully, like why Susan Hay Patrick may have been inclined to help keep the lid on the LifeGuard Group for her pal and Missoula’s former Sheriff, T.J. McDermott–then it’s important to ask the question Candace Owens asked this week, and that’s WHO THE HELL IS VICTOR MARX?

I recommend watching the Owens episode for the primer on this guy, who is apparently running for Governor of Colorado. Just the public information available on this guy is bizarre enough, including elements of his bio straight from his campaign website:

When my mother discovered she was pregnant with me, my biological father threatened to kill her. As a child, I endured unimaginable physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. By the time I was 17, I had lived in 17 homes and attended 14 schools. But God had other plans for my life.
​
Joining the United States Marine Corps became one of the most profound decisions I ever made. The Marines taught me discipline, brotherhood, and, for the first time, gave me a true sense of purpose. Guided by faith, I turned trauma into mission and committed myself to rescuing and restoring others from the same darkness I once walked through.
​
Just last year, I built a team and led them directly into ISIS territory so we could save a group of girls who had been kidnapped. Today, as the founder of All Things Possible Ministries, I’ve led more than 150 high-stakes missions across some of the world’s most dangerous regions—delivering trauma relief, medical aid, and hope to victims of terrorism, trafficking, and violence. Our teams have served more than 45,000 women and children, many of whom were rescued from captivity and given a second chance at life.

The Christian grift I have seen up close could literally be a part of the human trafficking networks they absurdly claim they are fighting, and they could be doing this either knowingly or unknowingly.

If you’re wondering how that could possible, one of the most effective strategies for shutting down inquiry amongst curious members of the flock is for a Christian grifter to do what Victor Marx allegedly did when challenged on his plans to traffick guns for God, and that’s immediately accuse your accuser of being possessed by demons. Once you’ve been declared to be suffering from demon possession, no further talking is needed.

My hope is some day the flock will upgrade their discernment, identify the grifters, and do what needs to be done to take out the trash so the adults can get down to the serious business of ACTUALLY protecting our kids from ACTUAL demons, which I believe really do exist.

Thanks for reading!

There were moments in 2023 when I didn’t want to be alive anymore. I found myself in a toxic relationship after leaving my wife of 20 years and the price of leaving THAT relationship is a price I’m still paying.

Yesterday, the woman who turned our toxic relationship into 3 years of lawfare that ended my podcast, ended my ability to attend City Council in person, and stopped me from writing about United Way of Missoula County for 6 months spoke about love and connecting with homeless people at the Urban Camping committee update. Let me delve into why I find this so troubling.

Before the person I call my petitioner was able to get a substitute judge who knew her from law school to impose a civil restraining order on me (after he explained why her copyright claims weren’t inappropriate for a protection order hearing), she had been harassing me via texts in an attempt to get me and my mother to meet with her. My mother knew my petitioner from church and was more familiar with her relationship tendencies than I had been when I met her through Rembrandt Miller, my collaborator on Engen’s Missoula.

Here are some texts I’ve curated from this hell period in my life. I’ll note the “Susan” my petitioner is referring to is Susan Hay Patrick, the outgoing director of United Way, who I believe helped inspire my petitioner to take legal action against me, and “Quentin” is the notorious Quentin Rhoades, my lawyer until my petitioner started working for him and conflicted him out of helping me defend myself.

At the time of these texts I was living in my art studio in a building owned by someone who attended my family’s church. That’s where I recorded this footage on July 1st, 2023, when my petitioner refused to acknowledge NO MEANS NO and showed up outside my studio despite me clearly telling her to leave me alone.

I wrote about this time period in my life recently when I saw similar protection order shenanigans playing out in the case of Brandon Wayne Bryant. In that post I highlighted the email I got making the demands that I my own family suggested I should ignore. Yeah, that worked out great.

If my petitioner and I weren’t still politically active in the town we both live in, where she’s writing op-eds for political candidates, making comments about loving homeless people, and making podcasts about the amazing killing of an abusive father because the daughter called the cops on him, then this post wouldn’t be necessary.

The narrative-control around homelessness that puts me in a whistleblower role stems from what happened to Sean Stevenson and Johnny Lee Perry at the hands of local law enforcement, and that’s because when I attend Coroner’s Inquests it’s not to celebrate law enforcement’s power to kill an abusive man, but to question that power. Maybe if I had done so as a Daniel Carlino-style politician I wouldn’t have inspired such a vicious effort to destroy me.

Daniel speaks up for the vulnerable, champions the underdog, and does what’s right because it’s right. For years I’ve watched him on City Council take courageous stands, even when unpopular, demonstrating a fearless integrity rarely seen.

Through my work alongside our unhoused neighbors, I’ve seen the impact of having a voice on City Council who cares not only for the most well-off among us, but also for those in crisis. That’s the mark of true leadership. From the first time Daniel’s campaign literature graced my doorstep, I knew he was my representative.

Daniel asks the hard questions, empowers minority voices, and does the hard work. He is “the man in the arena,” as Theodore Roosevelt says, “(spending) himself in a worthy cause.” Hope thrives in adversity, and Daniel is Missoula’s man of hope for this hour. If you want a candidate who loves deeply and dares greatly, vote Daniel Carlino for Ward 3.

This op-ed was published in the Missoula Current, the unofficial mouthpiece for Missoula Democrats, since Martin Kidston used to be the literal spokesperson for Montana Democrats years ago, which I pointed out (around the same time I was being harassed by my vindictive petitioner) with this July 2023 article, titled “The Missoula Current’s “Reporting” On Monday Night’s Urban Camping Debate“.

For more context on what happens when you ask ACTUAL hard questions about the power to end life by local authorities, this May 2023 article, titled “Is This What Missoula Current Advertisers Want To Be Paying For“, shows how Martin Kidston helped our local narrative-controllers inaccurately depict me in 2023 as something I’m not.

After my divorce and desperate traveling around America on the divorce money to avoid the stated intent of my petitioner to make good on her threats, I racked up several criminal charges for trying to continue the local activism I had been doing long before becoming involved with this person. The first charge was later dropped by the city, but it served the purpose of enabling “stacking” in order to achieve the scare-tactic of felony charges.

The second charge, which I was found guilty of, was pursued by the city despite zero direct interaction with my petitioner. The incident involved my presence in the parking lot of the hotel where Missoula’s leaders were having their “state of the community” wank-off narrative-control event. My recent clean up of meth-wankers using a homeless sex swing on the side of the river meant that I had lots of recent evidence of what happens when you ignore drug addiction’s impact on “urban camping”. My arrest occurred because I didn’t leave fast enough after someone from United Way told me that my petitioner would be in attendance.

*If you click the link above you may notice all my Vimeo videos are gone. That’s because this lawfare has been very effective at making and keeping me broke, so I couldn’t keep paying for the Vimeo data storage. I still have LOTS of “urban camping” footage, though, that one day will be see the light of day again.

The third violation became a collaborative effort between the city and county, since number three could have been a felony charge, but had to be downgraded once the city stopped pretending they were going to prosecute the first one. Regardless, the bathroom judge I had previously written about regarding the Mineral County shit-show wanted to keep the case so that he could impose the restriction on my citizen journalism, which happened seamlessly because the bathroom judge is a good little kangaroo.

Did I forget to mention my petitioner’s adopted brother, Dylan Laslovich, used to be Jon Tester’s chief of staff? Yeah, sure wish I knew about Judge Vannatta’s political donations, maybe my Public Defender could have done something to get the judicial venue changed.

This is the context that makes it a risk for me to walk out the door every day in this town. My petitioner demanded a 100 year extension (I’m not kidding) of the “temporary” order of protection once the first year was up and, after being told no by Judge Streano, my petitioner used her law school knowledge to appeal, claiming bias and successfully using a higher level of kangaroos to legally browbeat Judge Streano into extending the protection order for two years instead.

If I’m not hyper-aware of my surroundings and don’t immediately leave an area where my petitioner is, like I had to do during an April First Friday event at an art gallery where I sell bulk Legos, then I could be charged with a felony and end up in prison. That’s my reality.

I’ve spent time in jail because of this and lived for 4 months in my box truck, meaning homeless. Could I have accessed homeless services? Even if I had wanted to, which I didn’t, no, because my petitioner is one of those “loving” Christians working within the Homeless Industrial Complex I’ve risked my own life exposing.

To conclude this post that may or may not be protected by the First Amendment, I’m going to publish the police report I spent a whopping $7 dollars to get a copy of. When I was at my lowest, and expressing legitimate anger and frustration at what was happening to me, this is how a Pastor (who sits on a board with my petitioner’s family pal, Mike Nugent) chose to respond.

While this post is going to suck for a lot of people, it had to be published because I’m not unique in how political power uses every human weakness possible when real power is challenged. Lawfare is one of the most awful forms of political retaliation, especially for men geared toward taking action to address issues, which I did effectively for ten years in the non-profit sector I now am called to expose.

Thanks for reading!

Since I was in Bonner on Monday, attending the meeting where the Data Center was being discussed by locals, I didn’t check out the latest posturing from our CITY officials about the COUNTY location for Krambu’s project until yesterday. Luckily I have the former Democrat Spokesperson, Martin Kidston, doing his reporter LARP for the “Missoula Current”. Here’s an excerpt:

City and county leaders on Monday expressed concerns over the potential impacts of data centers as new proposals proliferate across Montana, including one center eyeing operations in Bonner.

Missoula Mayor Andrea Davis said that as artificial intelligence advances, so too must city operations and ethics. And as new data centers launch to feed the power-hungry technology, their impacts on economics, water and energy must be taken into consideration.

Despite LOTS of Harvard, my contention is Mayor Davis is one of the retarded stakeholders who must be looked at closely as she signals her virtue by claiming the advance of AI means Missoula must similarly advance “city operations and ethics”. Reading further, I came to this part about the Public Service Commission, which I highlighted in yesterday’s post detailing Step 1 for stopping Data Centers:

The 1 megawatt of power sought by Krambu in Phase 1 is enough to power nearly 800 homes for a year in the Pacific Northwest, according to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.

Given the power requirements, Northwestern Energy has already filed an application with the Montana Public Service Commission seeking approval of its terms to serve the boom of data centers proposed across state.

So, what might “advancing ethics” look like in liberal Missoula as our elected officials seek to influence the actions of the Public Service Commission? I’m glad you asked because there’s a reason I had Gemini put Mayor Davis in a graphic novel scene with a stylized Mayan temple and a depiction of Moloch behind her, and the reason is the TERRIBLE THREAT of one particular PSC candidate, Jeremy Trebas, who once did something so culturally offensive, the Montana Jewish Project had to be brought in to force Trebas to bend the knee.

Here’s how the “Daily Montanan” depicted the 2023 social media transgression that Trebas apparently committed:

This week, Sen. Jeremy Trebas retweeted a post on social media — since deleted — that implies Jews sacrifice babies.

In a letter to the Great Falls Republican, the Montana Jewish Project said harmful tropes like the one he reposted were used as a justification for the mass murder of Jews, which “horrifically reached its apotheosis in the Holocaust, when 6 million Jews were killed.”

“We expect better of you, Senator Trebas,” said Montana Jewish Project Director Rebecca Stanfel in the letter. “We ask that you immediately remove this offensive message on your X account and apologize for spreading vitriolic antisemitism.”

Trebas took down the post.

Before we get to the actual content Trebas re-tweeted, I’ll note my phone call to the Montana Jewish Project yesterday went unanswered, so I don’t have any updates on Trebas’ current thought crimes about the Jewish faith and the kind of women who associate abortions with Judaism in order to culture-bait people online. That said, here’s what the hullabaloo was all about in 2023:

The post from Trebas evolved on social media.

First, Sarah Marian Seltzer, an editor of Lilith, a Jewish and “frankly feminist” magazine, said this in an X post:

“Just a friendly reminder that banning abortion violates Jewish women’s ability to practice our religion.”

Rabbi Franklin shared how abortion fits into the context of the Jewish religion.

“Judaism is a religion that really values life and procreation, but also values the life of the woman over the developing fetus,” Franklin said.

She said it is permissible to end a pregnancy if the woman is in distress, which includes physical health and can extend to mental health.

“It’s actually a carefully worked out religious view which both recognizes the value of life and particularly the value of the woman who is bearing potential life, which is not yet realized,” Franklin said.

On social media, however, a different account that pushes Christian nationalism added an image of child sacrifice to Seltzer’s post with this: “If child sacrifice is a core tenant (sic) of your religion, you don’t worship Yahweh, You (sic) worship Moloch.”

The Montana Jewish Project said Molok refers in modern times to a god who demands child sacrifice.

Trebas reposted it.

If Jeremy Trebas is elected to the Public Service Commission, where some of the most important decisions about powering Data Centers in Montana will be made, I think it’s important to understand that EVERYTHING about this outrage in 2023 was total bullshit.

The Daily Montanan, for example, is an arm of “State Newsroom” reporting, which gets funding from Swiss billionaire, Hans Wyss. The reporter, Keila Szpaller, used to work at the Missoulian and, I was told, was the person who outed me to the Mayor back when I wrote under a pseudonym to avoid the kind of retaliation I’ve been dealing with now for years.

Then there’s the Montana Human Rights Network, which rebranded as Catalyst Montana, and the opportunity for outgoing race-baiter, Tobin Miller Shearer, to take a shot at Jeremy Trebas while the 2023 legislative session avoided taking action to restrain Tax Increment Financing.

Here’s another lengthy excerpt from the “news” article so readers in 2026 can see how MHRN and Shearer got to operate three years ago, before their beloved tiny-hat “victims” started mass-exterminating non-Jews wherever non-Jews try to interfere with “God’s” plan:

In a condemnation of Trebas’ repost, the Montana Human Rights Network pointed out the same conspiracy about child sacrifice came up during the legislative session this year at a hearing on a bill — sponsored by Rep. Stafman — to support the religious right to access abortion.

The bill, House Bill 471, died, but Franklin, Montana Human Rights Network board president, also commented in an interview on the public hearing.

“It just seems that among certain segments of our Montana community, there are people who are very, very hostile to religious freedom and very hostile to the idea that Judaism, for example or even other groups within Christianity, might find abortion to be acceptable under certain circumstances. And there is a demonization of those who would hold a view different from theirs — a very serious demonization — and that is disturbing.”

In an email, University of Montana Professor Tobin Miller Shearer said holding members of an institution accountable for reprehensible behavior matters.

“We have lots of historical examples … of lax enforcement leading to subsequent greater transgressions,” Miller Shearer said.

He pointed to the sexual assault crisis at the University of Montana roughly a decade ago.

Do “ethics” need advancing in Missoula? Yes. Is Mayor Davis and all the wonderful people who have spent the last 6 years ignoring the implications of allowing the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office to euthanize and execute black men, the kind of people to do the “advancing”?

FUCK NO.

Thanks for reading.

As the issue of “DATA CENTERS” becomes increasingly national my worry is that the nature of the conversation will become increasingly retarded as poorly informed community members enter the sausage-making process for local development to realize there’s not much they can do to stop what’s coming.

No one from Krambu was at the meeting last night in Bonner because why would they be? The community meeting they did appear at last month, hosted by the Friends of Two Rivers, was similarly non-obligatory, but Steve Wood understood the strategic benefit of putting a few crumbs of information out to the public. Hopefully “the public” understands it’s going to be up to them to educate themselves going forward.

Before I get to who was at last night’s meeting, let’s look at Newport, Washington, where Krambu is further along in the process of building their template for an environmentally friendly data center:

“In 2017 we developed some technology on the power and cooling side that was energy efficient and environmentally friendly,” Jank said. He said the technology allowed them to remove refrigerants and made the computers more energy efficient. “We got rid of waste.”

They were able to repurpose the heat from the computers. Steve Wood, former Ponderay Newsprint and Merkle Standard executive and now Krambu CEO, said the technology is the newest on the planet.

“We have been issued several patents,” Wood said, with additional patents filed.

“We partnered with Supermicro,” Wood said. Supermicro, Super Micro Computer, Inc., is a multibillion dollar global company that builds servers, storage systems and switches. Supermicro will be one of Krambu’s channel partners, he said, meaning they will help sell Krambu products.

The computers being built and located at the Newport site will be solving problems with Artificial Intelligence for clients, he said, using a computer network made up of 72 servers.

“These will be the highest performing computers in the world,” Wood said, using what is known as a 72-node cluster.

Missoula County officials at last night’s meeting confidently and proudly reminded those of us in the school cafeteria how they crafted a globally innovative provision to require data centers to use NEW, RENEWABLE energy for their computing infrastructure. My question was if the County officials had seen any indication that provision would be legally targeted with high-paid lawyers. While I got a non-answer answer local bureaucrats excel at providing, the question was more or less rhetorical, and that’s because companies like SUPERMICRO will have vastly more resources at their disposal than “the public” will.

For context, this comes from Supermicro’s Wikipedia page:

In September 2014, Supermicro moved its corporate headquarters to the former Mercury News headquarters in North San Jose, California, along Interstate 880, naming the campus Supermicro Green Computing Park. In 2017, the company completed a new 182,000 square-foot manufacturing building on the campus, which was designed to meet LEED gold certification. The company expanded its San Jose campus in September 2021 with a manufacturing facility for advanced storage and server equipment. Supermicro was reported to have 2,400 people working in San Jose.

In February 2025, Supermicro began building its third California-based manufacturing campus. The new campus is being developed with the intention to increase production of liquid-cooled services for data centers. The company produces a majority of its servers in California. Following a push for more state-side manufacturing by American President Donald Trump, Supermicro considered expanding server production in states like Mississippi and Texas. A few months later, in July 2025, Supermicro expressed its interest in expanding investment regarding manufacturing in Europe to meet artificial intelligence demand in the area.

In October 2025, Supermicro created a subsidiary focusing on American federal agencies, which would provide cloud-services and data center materials manufactured from its facilities in Silicon Valley, California.

One of my comments last night focused on the deplorable media landscape that exists, hence my retardation concerns. I mean, the irony of Supermicro moving into the former headquarters of the Mercury News is not lost on me.

When perennial Democrat candidate, Monica Tranel, made her comments about the Data Center, my re-dar (retard radar) alerted me to the hilarity of this “public defender”, who was recently busted for using AI to get a burglary charge dismissed, educating the room about a special Tariff we should all know about.

For a quick reminder about Tranel’s AI transgression, here’s the incident that inspired me to give her a specific shout-out:

A top attorney for the Office of Public Defender may have violated local artificial intelligence rules after the county attorney’s office discovered a case filing generated with AI.

Managing public defender Monica Tranel filed the motion Feb. 9 to dismiss a case about a local burglary, according to documents obtained by the Missoulian.

One week later, she asked the court to strike that document from the record after a county prosecutor suggested Tranel made the filing without properly disclosing the artificial intelligence use, or fact-checking its contents. She subsequently filed a corrected motion.

When Tranel said “Tariff”, it was clear many of the young people in attendance were immediately triggered. It was cute to see their fragile minds softly held by Tranel as she reassured them this wasn’t one of THOSE Tariffs, it was a really cool “large-load” Tariff, brought to you by the clown show currently running the Public Service Commission. Here’s the deets:

NorthWestern Energy recently filed an application with the Montana Public Service Commission (PSC) seeking approval of a new tariff aimed at governing how the utility serves large new or expanding electricity users, including data centers and other energy-intensive operations.

The proposal, submitted by NorthWestern Corp., would apply to customers with electric loads of 5 megawatts (MW) or greater, and it outlines contract requirements and service terms designed to manage the costs and operational demands of serving such large users while shielding existing customers from potential cost increases.

When Tranel told the room “large loads” meant 5MW loads or greater, my non-retarded buddy immediately turned to me and said, “then 4.9 MW Data Centers”. Sounds about right.

I’ll be writing more specifically about the PSC soon, but something about this proposal from Northwestern Energy makes me think that Tariff’ing large loads is just a PR move ahead of their MASSIVE merger with Black Hills Corps., which was announced last August:

NorthWestern Energy announced Tuesday it plans to merge with Black Hills Corp “to create a premier regional regulated electric and natural gas utility company” in a process expected to take 12 to 15 months and result in an enterprise valued at $15.4 billion.

The director of the Montana Public Service Commission said regulators will scrutinize the deal, and an energy watchdog group said the merger could be an improvement for clean energy compared to the “current stagnant utility.”

NorthWestern Energy is a monopoly utility that operates in Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska and serves 787,000 customers. It counts 413,400 electric and 214,500 natural gas customers in Montana.

The other notable person in the room last night was Tom Sergios, the Cognizant sellout I wrote about last week and who I immediately saw enjoying beer on the patio of Cranky Sam’s after posting my article. It’s important to enjoy the money you make in tech. I mean, why else compromise your morals, ethics, and soul for the child-fucking class?

May the odds be ever in their favor.

Thanks for reading!