Ian

Chicago-based.
I write about politics, culture, and institutional absurdity.
Unfiltered, evidence-first.

[Ian @ianfs]

Most political takes are performance art.
I care about 3 things:

• What’s true
• What changes outcomes
• What’s just noise

If you want signal over slogans, you’re in the right place.
Follow + tell me the issue you want dissected.

[Ian @ianfs]

@Dj88kHz @AiEvolutio58513 DOD was purchased from a Seattle programmer by Microsoft. Nobody stole anything.

[Ian @ianfs]

@Suntimes They absolutely are. Just not the problem @Suntimes wants to acknowledge.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. A potluck. Everyone brings one dish. I have never been so out of my depth in my life.

I was invited to a gathering. "Just bring a dish to share," they said. Simple words. I did not sleep for three days.

Because I understood instantly what this was. A summit. Every guest, a lord of their own house, arriving bearing tribute. And tribute is judged. Tribute is ranked. To bring the wrong dish to the wrong table is to fall in standing before your peers, possibly forever.

So I prepared. I made my finest dish. I carried it to the door with two hands and a straight back, braced for the weighing of my worth.

The first lord arrived with a bowl of orange powder noodles. Macaroni and cheese. The crowd roared. He set it down at the center of the table. The CENTER. I noted this. The center is the seat of power.

The second lord brought a tower of small brown meat orbs in red sauce. "Meatballs," he announced, like a man laying down a sword. They were placed beside the macaroni. A strong showing. An alliance, perhaps.

I studied the table like a battlefield map. Potato salad: defensive, reliable, old money. A vegetable tray, untouched, clearly a hostage offering no one expected to win. And then a woman walked in, raised a flat box overhead, and the entire room turned and CHEERED.

Pizza. She had brought pizza. Store-bought. Still in the box.

I was stunned. She had not even cooked it. And yet the people rejoiced as if a king had entered. I revised my entire understanding of the hierarchy on the spot. Effort means nothing here. Only the roar of the crowd decides rank.

I placed my dish down, humbly, near the napkins. A peasant's position. I accepted it.

And then a man tapped my shoulder, pointed at my dish, and said the words that changed everything.

"Whoa, did you make this? This is amazing. Everybody, you GOTTA try this guy's thing."

The room turned. The room came. The room ATE. My dish vanished in ninety seconds. The pizza woman herself took a second helping and looked at me with respect.

I had won the summit. By accident. With a dish I placed by the napkins.

I understand nothing about this country. I have never been happier. I am hosting the next one.

So tell me, America.

Is there a system to the potluck? A secret rank? A hidden law?

I have decided there is not.

You just bring the thing you love, and everyone eats it, and somehow everybody wins.

It is the most insane way to hold a war.

I will fight in every single one.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In America, a stranger will rename you in a single breath, and you are simply expected to come when called.

I went to eat at a busy restaurant. A young man at the front asked for my name, to mark my place in line. I gave it the weight it has carried for eight hundred years.

"Nobunaga."

He smiled, nodded, and wrote it down with great confidence. Then he read it back to me, to be sure he had honored it correctly.

"Perfect. Banana, party of one."

Banana. He had heard my name, held it a moment, and returned to me something rounder and more cheerful. To refuse the name a host gives is to refuse his welcome. I bowed. I was Banana now.

Then he handed me a small black disc, said it would "light up and buzz" when my table was ready, and turned to the next guest as though he had not just placed a living thing in my hands.

I held it in both palms, the way one holds a small sleeping beast that may wake. I found a place to stand. I waited, ready.

It woke.

It screamed. It flashed red. It leapt and shook in my hands like a captured spirit demanding release. A lesser man would have dropped it. I did not. I gripped it, steady, looked into its blinking lights, and told it, in a low voice, that its time had come. Then I carried it back to the host with both hands, the way one returns a hawk to its master.

He took it without looking and shouted across the entire room.

"BANANA! Party of one, your table's ready!"

A hundred strangers turned. I rose. I crossed that floor as Banana, spine straight, chin level, a man answering to his name. A child pointed at me. I gave the child a small bow. He had recognized me.

All through the meal they kept me. "How's it tasting, Banana?" "More water, Banana?" The check, when it came, said Banana, and thanked me for visiting. By the end the whole staff knew me. They waved as I left. "Night, Banana!"

So tell me honestly.

For eight hundred years my clan answered to one name. Tonight I answered to a fruit, calmed a screaming relic in my bare hands, and ate among people who were glad I came.

When the little disc lights up, is the table truly mine, or am I only keeping it warm for the next Banana?

Because I have already decided to return on Friday, and to ask, very humbly, for the same disc.

[Ian @ianfs]

@themarketswork @HunterBiden Yeah?

[Wilfred Reilly @wil_da_beast630]

Never forget.

Never forgive.

[Ian @ianfs]

@ABC7Chicago Yeah, concern isn't split. It's the city government and media like you who are presenting that. Precisely zero Chicago residents think this is a good idea.

[Ian @ianfs]

Utterly divorced from reality. And yet this take is not rare.

[MS.JAZZY @MsJazzybelle]

Meanwhile, they tell their children to find the nearest black woman when they’re lost or in trouble, because we’re safe..while they shoot ours down like dogs…aye man

[Stacy is Right @PoliticalStacy]

If I dedicated the whole month of June to telling kids how much I love to have heterosexual sex, that would be strange and disturbing.

Guess what? It's still fucking disturbing when you tell kids about your gay sex.

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

Six years ago today.

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

You’ll notice there is no look-back celebration or remembrance of this or virtually any of the other great moral victories from that era. It’s all been memory holed, a will-o'-the-wisp dimming out in the far distance.

[Carpe Donktum🔹 @CarpeDonktum]

How we got here.

1. "If only we didnt have to be in the closet, then we would be happy."

2. "If only we got some validation and representation in film and media, then we would be happy."

3. "If only we could marry each other, then we would be happy."

4. "If only we got a protected status from the government, then we would be happy."

5. "If only people would accept us for who we are, then we would be happy."

6. "If only people were compelled by law to join us in our fantasy and constantly validate us, then we would be happy."

7. "If only we could make people celebrate us for a whole month, then we would be happy."

[jim iuorio @jimiuorio]

The people who are going to be the most mad at @ChicagoBears when they move to Indiana are the people who’ve been actively voting to make Illinois the least business friendly state…there’s zero chance that they realize they are 100% to blame…

[Ian @ianfs]

@MagneticNorse If you wrap your take in a bunch of words in an image instead of typing it out here does it make it less idiotic?

[Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers @UnderSecPD]

In 2021, Canadian media and institutions basically hallucinated the discovery of 215 children’s bodies in a mass grave near a former Catholic residential school. The evidence: radar saw soil disturbances that could have been tree roots. A wave of church arsons ensued.

People making the case for censorship often urge that destructive manias like this can be suppressed/soothed if we prevent people from communicating about them. And here was a perfect case: false information was being recklessly (or maliciously) amplified, leading to literal hate crimes. Shouldn’t the censors do something?

But the mass-grave craze infected the censorship class, so opposition got targeted instead. At least one “disinformation” NGO categorized skepticism as “hate speech,” and Canada even saw efforts to criminalize so-called “denialism” (drawing an absurd comparison to the Holocaust).

Good for the Globe and Mail to come clean.

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

I have found it, the Platonic form of every New York Times op-ed.

[Ian @ianfs]

@ElizabethHolmes @cremieuxrecueil Wasn’t there a company which could do a bunch of tests on just a single drop? Who was that?

[Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin]

There is something darkly amusing about the fact that selling victimhood to the most privileged people in history has become such a lucrative and big business.

When I was on tour with @jordanbpeterson he talked about many things, but probably the most common recurring theme was the "Spirit of Cain". It seems our ancient and sacred texts tell these stories for a reason: victimhood is easy, seductive and addictive. And now profitable too.

We are living through a perpetual victimhood escalation battle where people (and groups) now compete not on merit, but on the supposed disadvantages they face. Which makes perfect sense since this is the incentive structure our societies have been encouraged and forced to adopt.

[Ian @ianfs]

@Gisele_ShoeSmug @NewsHour You’re a Canadian Health Inspector. Let me guess - you’re 50 pounds overweight.

[Ian @ianfs]

@ChicagoBreaking How is this Chicago breaking news?