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Gnomon Chronicles is a work of fiction and nonfiction by Karl Jones.

NO FICTION AT THIS TIME.

Only nonfiction.

Forgive my grief: George Floyd protests

"Light em up."

"Light em up"

A Minneapolis Police officer used the phrase "Light em up" immediate prior to the heavily armed police squad closing ranks in attack formation and firing one or two rounds of non-lethal ammunition into peaceful citizens. The civilians where standing in the doorway of a private home on a residential street in South Minneapolis During the May 2020 riots.

• Video of police officer firing non-lethal rounds into peaceful civilians

TO_DO: establish date of shooting: May 30, 31?

Minneapolis riots Umbrella Man

Minneapolis riots umbrella man (nonfiction).

Be aware that Minneapolis riots umbrella man (nonfiction) is real.

Umbrella Man is a masked operative of unknown identity and motive who carefully committed a planned act of property damage during a riot. He wears a distinctive full-face gas mask, and carries a black umbrella which he uses to conceal his face.

A video of the AutoZone windows attack shows the event clearly. Umbrella Man breaks a series of windows in a crisp, efficient attack. There are shouts of "Are you a cop?" Umbrella man then swiftly leaves.

Umbrella Man works with an accomplice ("Pizza Dude", "Pink Shirt Dude"). In the attack video, Pizza Dude appears to confront Umbrella Man. But in another video, Umbrella Man and Pizza Dude walk side-by-side, looking very much like a team, a pair.

Identity of Umbrella Man not known

Please - Tamp down rumors and speculations about the identity of Umbrella Man.

DO NOT repeat the allegation that Umbrella Man is a police office.

• Saint Paul PD has denied the allegation
• It is not possible to determine Umbrella Man's identity from the videos I have watched.
• Very likely the perpetrators staged the scene to create a false "It's a cop" narrative.

Private speculation is okay, of course. But keep it offline, quiet conversations on the side, not social media posts.

Investigate like a detective, with all your suspicions alert.

Speak like a prosecuting attorney, aggressive as possible but never beyond the evidence.

About the Gnomon Chronicles

I have a documentary mind. I document, I chronicle. I do it compulsively every day, always have. It makes me happy. That's why I have a wiki.

I also write fiction. I do it compulsively every day, always have. I need ⁠— emotional and physically need ⁠— to express the Jonathan-Swift-meets-Edward-Lear nonsense that comes into my head. If I don't, I get itchy troubled feelings which make happiness difficult.

I launched the Gnomon Chronicles wiki as a medium where I deliberately confuse nonfiction with fiction. It is a deconstructed historical novel, a collection of definitional fabulisms, a half-finished graphic novel. I take great care and pride in my conflation of truth and lies (that's how fiction works, right?) ... sly mashups of incongruous ideas, Spoonerisms disguised as restaurants or technologies, flying bison, flying lunch cars, carnivorous dirigibles, portable envy, autonomous gibbets, downloadable alien liquor as metaphor for parasitic consumer capitalism, transdimensional drugs with spooky actions at a distance ... weird ideas fused onto normal ideas fighting normal ideas infused with weird ideas ... science fiction and fantasy. Comic book stuff. Superheroes, time travel. Unforgivable puns. Encyclopunk.

But I have always, from the beginning, rigorously labelled all of the nonfictional page titles (nonfiction), and elsewhere noted "nonfiction", and carefully marked "Fictional cross-references". On the fictional pages, I have similarly rigorously provided nonfictional links.

So no matter how unsure you are whether I am wearing my Apollonian hat or my Dionysian garter belt, the clues are always nearby, the answer is no further than one click away.

Every nonfictional page which has (nonfiction) in the title is a truly nonfictional page written in Wikipedia style. I mimic Wikipedia in most things (apart from choice of subject matter, and personal opinion or research which I mark as such).

I know this is a peculiar place to document citizen detective-journalism, so I want to make clear that Minneapolis riots umbrella man (nonfiction) is no fiction, no flight of fantasy. This is real.

Anyway, who better than me? I know all about untangling fact from fiction. I am the Disambiguator. It's my thing.

Be assured — I will never write fictions about Minneapolis riots umbrella man (nonfiction), never tell jokes or post caricatures. This is citizen journalism, not Alice in Wonderland.