Month: July 2024

by Travis Mateer

Before I get to the fun mental health assessments I just read about myself on Reddit, let’s take a quick look at this information platform and the quality of thought it promotes, especially after the Chinese investment from Tencent. Here’s a little context from Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

Reddit was founded by University of Virginia roommates Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, as well as Aaron Swartz, in 2005. Condé Nast Publications acquired the site in October 2006. In 2011, Reddit became an independent subsidiary of Condé Nast’s parent company, Advance Publications. In October 2014, Reddit raised $50 million in a funding round led by Sam Altman and including investors Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Ron Conway, Snoop Dogg, and Jared Leto. Their investment valued the company at $500 million at the time. In July 2017, Reddit raised $200 million for a $1.8 billion valuation, with Advance Publications remaining the majority stakeholder. In February 2019, a $300 million funding round led by Tencent brought the company’s valuation to $3 billion. In August 2021, a $700 million funding round led by Fidelity Investments raised that valuation to over $10 billion. The company then reportedly filed for an IPO in December 2021 with a valuation of $15 billion. Reddit debuted on the stock market on the morning of March 21, 2024 with the ticker symbol RDDT.

I am emphasizing the names of Aaron Swartz and Peter Thiel because they are significant when one considers the meta-project of narrative control. Aaron Swartz, who thought information should flow freely, ended up hanging from a rope because of the massive retaliation he experienced for fucking with institutions like MIT. I included a documentary about Swartz in this post I wrote after rewatching the movie Real Genius from the vantage point of 2022.

Peter Thiel, on the other hand, is someone I’m currently writing about because of his deep involvement in the trajectory of JD Vance. Narrative control is something Thiel takes very seriously, which his bankrolling of Hulk Hogan’s takedown of Gawker clearly shows. If you’re not aware that Thiel bankrolled the takedown of Gawker, here’s the opening of the Wired article I linked to:

EVEN TWO YEARS later, it’s still hard to believe it happened. But in March 2016, Hulk Hogan did indeed drive Gawker Media into bankruptcy after it published a video of the wrestler having sex with his best friend’s wife. And he pursued his lawsuit with funding from billionaire investor and Facebook board member Peter Thiel.

A decade earlier, in its casually cruel way, Gawker had outed Thiel, so he decided, coldly and deliberately, to drive it out of business, secretly funnelling $10 million into cases against the US publisher.

Even Hogan himself didn’t know Thiel was his backer. The whole affair was, as Ryan Holiday describes in his new book, a conspiracy – one whose consequences reverberate to this day.

Does Hulk’s appearance at the RNC make a little more sense now?

Since being a crazy conspiracy theorist is one of the pejorative labels the Redditors are throwing at me, let’s take a look at what the conspiracy site, Vigilant Citizen, has to say about Reddit, post assassination attempt on Trump. From the link:

Although the FBI gained access to Crooks’ phone, there might be a reason why there is so little information concerning his online activity: He might have been radicalized by some of the elite’s favorite outlets. Indeed, as a 20-year-old white American male with some interest in politics, Crooks is the target audience of a highly popular yet toxic site: Reddit.

Dubbed “the front page of the internet,” the social news site Reddit is currently the 18th most visited website in the world. While Reddit used to be a hotspot of memes and entertaining articles, the site has taken a drastic turn in recent years. To put it bluntly, it is now a den of propaganda and disinformation, curated by sophisticated algorithms, AI bots, and various agents. This switch occurred about five years ago, which coincided with Reddit being partly acquired by Tencent – the Chinese multinational technology conglomerate.

Ok, with this foundation of context firmly established, let’s see how “Lego Guy” is being depicted on this lovely platform.

And the responses? Here are a few:

And here are a few more:

Well, bigdipperexemployee, I also had no idea how transphobic and racist I was. Damn! I sure hope these keyboard warriors find a way to cancel me before I infect people with my hateful conspiracy theories.

Here are the last few comments, as of this writing, assessing my hatefulness.

For those keeping score, I can now be referred to as a transphobic, racist, narcissistic, sociopathic schizophrenic who yells hateful stuff about Thunderdomes and my disdain for the homeless. Oh, and don’t forget about my doll, Vicky, the professional victim who has a secret she keeps hidden under her dress in case she gets called out for her white privilege.

I hope these Redditors don’t find out about what the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office has done to black men in this town, because then they might have to deal with the fact that Sean Stevenson was FUCKING EUTHANIZED, and that Johnny Lee Perry was SHOT IN THE FUCKING BACK.

Racist? That’s hilarious. If any of these faceless fucks on Reddit would like to be useful, I DO still have my dick, and they are free to suck it, if they like.

Now, for some context on my homeless perspective that does NOT feature profanity and suggestions of fellatio, here is an interview I did recently with Monica Perez.

Don’t worry, Missoula, I do have plans to one day leave this town, but right now I’m legally obligated to remain in this scenic land of liberal retardation, so, if you don’t want to be triggered by the reality I report on, do what so many in this town have become experts at: staying ignorant while believing you’re well-informed.

For those who do appreciate what I’ve sacrificed to bring reality to your sad little technology screen, or your earhole (if you’re brave enough to approach the crazy Lego Guy in the box truck), then please consider donating to Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

With the help of their Mighty Wurlitzer, Democrats are busy with their new WEIRD line of attack against conservatives. From the link:

The word of the moment is “weird.”

That’s the term floating around about former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance. Pioneered as an attack line by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, “weird” encapsulates the peculiar position of our modern-day Republican Party. It wants voters to support a singularly unappetizing duo, one of them prone to monologues about Hannibal Lecter and sharks, the other hating on “childless cat ladies.”

Is this a joke? No, it’s not a joke. Democrats appear to really think depicting Vance and Trump as WEIRD is going to get traction, which means these idiots don’t even understand their own base.

To emphasize how clueless this line of attack is, here’s a blog post from 2010 about the KEEP IT WEIRD slogan coming to Missoula:

There’s no doubt the Zoo has earned its weird designation. But I refuse to adopt the “Keep Missoula weird” slogan, because it’s a stolen one. Perhaps that’s not common knowledge here (though I find that hard to believe these days, with the Internets and whatnot), but it originated in Austin, for many of the same reasons it fits Missoula.

I first heard of the slogan when I spent several weeks in the Texas capital a few summers ago as part of an internship residency. Austin is to Texas what Missoula is to Montana (OK, it’s probably the other way around, but same diff), and it definitely fits the bill as weird. Especially compared with the rest of Texas (or so I hear — I’m sort of afraid to experience “the rest of Texas”).

So to me, using the stolen slogan just because it “works” defies the very cause it’s perpetuating, to “keep Missoula weird.” Maybe this is part of a larger scheme by someone trying to capitalize on the slogan’s popularity in Austin (apparently Boulder, Portland and Louisville have adopted the slogan, too, and I can’t imagine it’s not copyrighted), but I still don’t like it. I’m all for keeping Missoula weird, but let’s try to keep it original, too.

I didn’t know Austin was where this slogan originated, but I’m also not surprised. You see, I specialize in delving into the weird way this world actually works, and Austin is a location where the weirdness is pretty damn dark, which makes me think of this quote from Hunter S. Thompson:

Later this week, at Western Montana News, I’ll be writing about my attempt to track down a rumor regarding a supposed effort to help those living out of vehicles. I’ll also include a little perspective on our former placeholder Mayor, Jordan Hess, and his new role as CEO of public transit in Missoula. Will Hess be able to handle the SLOPED SURFACES I’ve been warning Mountain Line about for six years now?

Speaking of sloped surface and government agencies, I noticed a curious article in our LOCAL newspaper about the Secret Service training center and the “tweaks” that will be made, post-assassination attempt on Trump. Before I quote from that hilarious article, here’s a quote from a Nazi worth considering:

From the link (emphasis mine):

At an installation in Laurel, nestled among government research facilities, all U.S. Secret Service agents go through months of intensive training for their “zero-fail” mission of protecting U.S. leaders.

Although the agency’s training operations and protection strategies have long been considered top-of-the-line, there will likely be tweaks as authorities investigate the security pitfalls that led to a gunman being able to fire at former President Donald Trump, striking the Republican candidate in the ear and killing an attendee at a rally this month in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Tweaks and security PITFALLS? What a fucking joke. Even more of a joke, the woman who presided over the security clusterfuck was the LEAD AGENT running this training facility. Isn’t that WEIRD?

Cheatle, who said she took “full responsibility for the security lapse,” was once the special agent in charge of the facility, handling “all aspects of training and career development” after being appointed to lead it in 2016, according to the Secret Service’s online biography of her.

The national media, combined with the conspicuous non-results from online search engines, isn’t weird, it’s a conscious attempt to influence the presidential election. Also, it won’t work, but keep trying, you Wurlitzer-banging morons. I’m sure Barbara Streisand is cheering you on.

A key Google feature is failing to show results for the attempted assassination of Donald Trump — drawing claims from the former president’s son that Big Tech companies are trying to influence the election.

It has also sparked a Senate investigation.

Google users were surprised to discover that the search engine’s “Autocomplete” was apparently omitting suggested results related to the assassination attempt against Donald Trump.

The anomaly quickly caught the attention of social media users, including a Texas congressman and Donald Trump Jr., who began sharing screenshots of their own examples showing Google search suggestions coming up empty for queries about the deadly Pennsylvania rally shooting.

There’s no mention of Trump even when the entire search term “the assassination attempt of” is typed into the Google homepage search bar.

If you appreciate the perspective of a non-Wurlitzer playing local journalist, please consider donating to Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

Today we’re going to look at the claim that the cool kid clique on City Council isn’t interested in hearing reports from what they consider the MINORITY. That’s why an effort is being made, says the minority, to “streamline” the process for getting items on the agenda. From the link (emphasis mine):

An effort to streamline the legislative process by requiring that a referral have greater support before it’s scheduled for a hearing failed to pass a Missoula City Council committee on Wednesday.

Council member Mike Nugent’s measure sought to “better clarify the referral” process and streamline “the flow of businesses from committees to full council.”

What’s the problem with how things work now? The problem is that some City Councilors, like Daniel Carlino, get to DISCUSS something if it gets on the agenda, and that discussing-of-something, when done by someone in the minority, is distasteful to the clique. It can lead to things the clique doesn’t want to do, like staying up past their bedtime in order to listen to passionate public comments.

You might think the people who love DEMOCRACY and INCLUSION so much would be inclined to allow minority discussions, but you would be WRONG. Winning an election in Missoula is apparently NOT ENOUGH to get your voice heard. If the MAJORITY have their way, minority Council members will have to run little mini-campaigns for the benefit of the clique in order to get agenda items a proper hearing.

Here’s more on the effort to “streamline” the referral process, including Mike Nugent’s rationale for why he’s doing the heavy lifting for the clique (emphasis mine):

Among other things, if a committee chair opted not to schedule a referral for a hearing, Nugent’s measure would allow for a poll of all council members to gauge whether there’s sufficient interest to schedule the measure anyway.

A referral could also automatically make the hearing schedule if it has at least four sponsors. Nugent said the new rules would help keep the city focused on important issues and not waste time on matters that have little interest, or simply propel one person’s personal agenda.

“There are people who hijack the processes for their own personal benefit and find ways to bring things up that should never get the light of day,” he said. “When we put something on the agenda, it gets oxygen, it gets attention, and I don’t think that’s always a good thing. I think it’s reasonable for us to have a scheduling process that addresses that.”

Sure, Mike, denying oxygen to something you’d like to eliminate is a totally reasonable thing to do and it looks NOTHING like this.

The article from the propaganda arm of City Council (aka, the Missoula Current) does leave a little room at the end for the minority to complain about how the cool kids don’t return phone calls. Maybe this complainer should SHOW UP IN PERSON to more effectively compel the clique to listen (emphasis mine):

Jordan and fellow council member Daniel Carlino represent a small minority on City Council as self-professed democratic socialists. Jordan said it’s “almost impossible” for her to get something heard in committee.

“When I make phone calls to people, they don’t respond. It’s almost impossible for me to do work behind the scenes because people don’t return my phone call,” said Jordan. “I feel there’s definitely a clique on City Council and when you’re in, you’re in, and when you’re not, you’re not, and right now I’m not in.”

I think it’s kinda adorable that Kristen Jordan keeps complaining to the propaganda arm of City Council, especially after the tantrum she threw last month, which I wrote about here.

If you read that post you’ll see that I reached out to Kristen Jordan regarding her claim that people making public comments were experiencing retaliation, but Jordan never responded to my email. If Kristen Jordan is unwilling to back up the claims she’s making to a REAL truth teller, like myself, who is experiencing more serious retaliation than she can possibly imagine, then I’m going to just ignore her pathetic complaints. Political impotence, in this case, appears to be a choice. Maybe this member of the minority doesn’t understand what it means to be fighting a culture war.

For a much less pathetic assessment of this failed move by Mike Nugent to help insulate his clique from dissenting opinions, here’s the longest serving conservative member of Council, Sandra Vasecka, expressing her opinion on what this move would do, if passed:

“I see this as a way to hide behind a computer screen and not have a discussion on uncomfortable topics where constituents can hear what the people they elected have to say about such topics,” said Vasecka.

While Sandra has NEVER been a part of the clique, she’s maintained a dissenting voice without making Council seem like a sequel to the movie MEAN GIRLS, and for that she should be commended.

If you appreciate my ability to create MINORITY REPORTS about the local drama of City Council, please consider donating to Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). I’m dealing with much more serious methods of political retaliation than unreturned phone calls for the light I’ve shined, and will CONTINUE to shine, on local abuses of power,

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

I started watching the not-so-subtle Super Hero satire, The Boys, and OH BOY do we have an interesting piece of programming to consider as Trump’s pick for Vice President gets scrutinized.

Here in Missoula, we are still dealing with the fallout from a REAL storm that hit Wednesday and utterly decimated trees across the valley. The two geographical locations hit hardest are the part of town where I work (Southside of town) and the part of town where my kids live (Mullan area). Here’s a picture of the house I once called home covered by the line of Cottonwoods that blew over ON TOP of the house.

The propaganda we often hear during times of crisis like these is that neighbors help neighbors and isn’t it great that people in this town are so wonderful. The reality, though, can be quite different, like the guy that started shooting at first responders DURING the storm.

The shooting was reported Thursday at 2:17 a.m. on the 100 block of River Pines Road, according to a press release from sheriff’s office spokesperson Jeannette Smith. The location is just west of the Bitterroot River, between Maclay Bridge and Blue Mountain Road.

“A vehicle drove through the downed trees in the roadway and crashed into a nearby tree” where energy crews were responding to hazards caused by the thunderstorm, Smith wrote in a press release Thursday morning.

The driver allegedly left the scene, and “seconds later reports of shots fired and bullets near the location of the energy crews were reported, with at least one bullet striking the responders’ vehicle,” Smith wrote. “Due to video taken at the scene, the male suspect has been identified and taken into custody.”

The type of shooting one of my kids got upset about involves cameras and the Missoulians who keep driving by his house, stopping, and taking pictures. The damage caused by this storm was TRAUMATIC for my kids, so it would be great if the assholes taking pictures of their house, you know, fucking STOPPED doing that shit.

Another way to assess a community’s response to a natural disaster is by checking out the unscripted reactions from local citizens on social media. Here’s an example:

Since we’re talking about managed narratives, there are two other articles that caught my attention. The first is a NBC Montana piece that claims small, local businesses do better in a tough economy than big businesses. This claim accompanies the headline Growth outpaces closures in latest Downtown Missoula report. From the link (emphasis mine):

The openings come despite challenges like high interest rates, which caused many in the marketplace to pause their projects, McCarthy said. Local companies are opening, growing and thriving despite the different hurdles.

The larger economic picture is a bit questionable, McCarthy told NBC Montana, saying local businesses navigate the ups and downs of the economy better.

“What’s really nice is in downtown Missoula we’re a very localized economy,” she said. “We have many locally owned businesses as compared to national brands, so we tend to ride the waves of the economy a little bit better in a more healthy way in our community.”

Is this true? Well, according to this Investopedia piece about how recessions impact businesses, not really. Here’s a screenshot:

The other article that caught my attention promotes the idea that Montana has well-trained individuals capable of using forensics to solve crimes, and that the new class offerings from the University of Montana will only improve the quality of those individuals and their CSI skills. There’s even pictures of students wearing lab coats and using microscopes. Wow!

From the link (emphasis mine):

The course weaves in elements of both forensics and criminology.

“It gives them a good breadth of exposure to everything,” Marko said.

Last week, students visited the Montana Crime State Crime Lab in Missoula. They also listened to a presentation from a Missoula Police Department detective, who fielded questions from the group about what they might expect if they chose a career in law enforcement and how criminal investigations work.

I have a lot of questions after reading this article, but my first question is WHICH Detective from Missoula PD fielded questions for theses students? If it was Detective Guy Baker, well, I’ve seen his skills critically examined ON THE STAND during the Lee Nelson murder trial and I was NOT impressed. In fact, it was that trial that inspired me to develop my shit-talking echo-location methodology for assessing the depths of corruption our famous Detective might be influenced by.

The article continues by describing how these students will be working a case modeled after Missoula’s serial killer, Wayne Nance. This is a particularly HILARIOUS case to use, considering Nance’s reign of terror was stopped by a CITIZEN and NOT law enforcement, since law enforcement couldn’t think beyond their own jurisdictional demarcation lines to see the pattern of violence and understand what they were dealing with.

I tried making this point about law enforcement, Missoula’s serial killer, and jurisdictional barriers last November, but, thanks to a particularly insidious form of political retaliation, I was barred from making my public comment in person.

Tangentially, our serial killer had a name, and that name–the Missoula Mauler–became the name of the junior hockey team started by Michael Burks, a fascinating guy connected to our Sheriff’s Office before running for political office, losing, then later getting ousted from the gym company he ran amidst odd claims, made to me, about drug trafficking.

For those who want to better understand the coming STORMFRONT, I’ll be publishing something this coming week examining Trump’s pick for Veep in order to expose the REAL influence behind the Vance decision, so stay tuned. If you appreciate my perspective, please consider supporting Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). I lost two days of work because of the storm, and it’s been 25 days since the last donation, so now would be a GREAT time to donate. Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

When a tornado destroyed downtown Waco in 1953, many in the black community saw it was an act of divine retribution for the horrific lynching of Jesse Washington. Here’s former Texas Governor, Rick Perry, discussing this act of community-supported violence:

Even today, we Texans struggle to talk about what happened to Jesse Washington. We don’t want to believe that our great state could ever have been the scene of such unimaginable horror.

But it is an episode in our history that we cannot ignore. It is an episode we have an obligation to transcend.

Here in Missoula, the black man pictured above was euthanized by the Sheriff’s Office on January 5th, 2020, just two days after being assaulted inside the homeless shelter that once employed me. I’ve written dozens of articles trying to understand how this could happen in a liberal community like Missoula, but, over 4 years later, I’m still stumped. It doesn’t help that this same Sheriff’s Office shot and killed the one man allegedly responsible for putting Sean Stevenson into a coma two weeks after I posted this footage of him acting threatening near the Poverello Center:

https://vimeo.com/704427238

Our local officials in Missoula do NOT want to discuss the cases of two dead black men because the inconvenient manner of their deaths BY the Sheriff’s Office undermines EVERYTHING our woke leaders claim to care about.

Yesterday my article about Mayor Davis’ disingenuous culture of curiosity branding effort was published at Western Montana News, so check it out. If Mayor Davis ever gets curious enough to delve into why Sean was euthanized and Johnny executed, I’m available and ready to help.

https://vimeo.com/823606653?share=copy

Next week I’m going to publish a speculative post about the FBI, white supremacy, and the ideological overlap between a tech billionaire and some curious intellectuals that you won’t want to miss, so stay tuned. If you’d like to help support my local reporting with implications that reach FAR beyond this humble valley, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is the way to do it. Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!