HereAndGone
1mo ago
At the moment, it's looking like (1) transwoman (2) possibly attended the school, mother used to work in the parish office (3) general mental illness craziness from the very censored reports on the 'manifesto' which seems to have been a mix of everything from anti-Trump to racist to depressed to anti-Semitic to 'everybody hates me, I hate them' (we'll have to see what content is there if/when it's leaked).
So I don't think there was an agenda, just someone with access to guns and a grudge against society heading out to someplace they were familiar with as their most accessible representation of authority to shoot it up.
HereAndGone
1mo ago
Not precisely, although there is some overlap with social conditions (long term generational unemployment, poverty, criminality, single motherhood, drugs, and so on). There's also the modern interventions in school and via social workers which teach the baby criminals that the best defence is attack, i.e. if witnessed committing crimes or hanging around in groups likely to be up to no good, immediately start yelling about racism/you're attacking me, help help/paedophile (as here, this is the newest angle of 'turn the accusation around') and the likes.
I don't know why the guy recorded those girls. Maybe he was a paedo brown creep who was creeping on innocent white Scottish girls. Maybe they had done or said something before this and he was recording in case things kicked off. but walking around with a knife and hatchet is not "I'm defending myself in case a brown rapist paedophile tries to get me". It may well be "I'm defending myself from the other violent white girls around here" or "I'm commencing my career of petty crime by getting ready with my mate to threaten and mug a passer-by" or even just "I'm acting tough and copying the older petty criminals and feral teenagers around here".
We haven't enough information as yet to know what exactly was going on, but there's plenty of reasons not to immediately assume the girls were innocent little blossoms just pre-emptively ensuring their virtue was safe by going around with knives.
HereAndGone
1mo ago
Did you detect, here, the edges of an idea which might hurt your social status were you to accept it?
That would require me to have social status in the first place.
You describe the males as getting smarter because of all the complex political manoeuvring they have to do. Meanwhile, all the females have to do is turn up to eat the yummiest food sources and wait to be mated by the winning male.
That does not take into account female social competition: how do I ensure I am the one mating with the winner (because sometimes there is a hierarchy for females just as for males)? how do I ensure my offspring come out on top? how do I make sure my son is the next alpha (to use that clumsy term) and I have influence through/beside him?
As well as sexual selection - maybe the winner thinks he gets to mate with all the females and he alone gets this, but there's always (1) unwilling females refuse his advances and (2) cuckoldry, again for want of a better term - lower status males sneak in behind the alpha's back and some females preferentially mate with them.
Females too need to develop intelligence for politics, both for intra-female competition and to deal with the alpha and the other males.
HereAndGone
1mo ago
The UK is much nearer to my country than to yours, and the context is not the same. There's more immigration, or at least over a longer period, in Scotland but it's not as much as in England and the environment of underclass whites is enough that they were already stabbing and attacking each other before ever a brown guy showed up.
You tell me what this kid was protecting himself from: threat of rape by a Mongolian immigrant woman, or he went out tooled up to rob at age 14? Already with drug addiction and broken home behind him at that age? And had attempted to rob another woman and produced a knife before this?
This is not Rotherham Part Deux, and you don't understand the social cues and clues that are leading us over here to doubt what is going on. If I said "white trailer trash" it might make it clearer, but even then that's not an exact equivalent.
HereAndGone
1mo ago
If someone is carrying around multiple hard to conceal weapons it is indeed very odd, and begs the question of WHY.
Because she's a rancid little slapper who is gearing up to get herself into real trouble and do hard prison time as soon as she's old enough. Believe you me, there's a lot of kids running around with dumb shit like this and it's not to protect themselves from potential rape by brown people. The girl I know who stabbed another young woman in the stomach at a house party was not protecting herself from an immigrant rapist, she was in an environment of drink and drugs and already down the path of petty crime and drug addiction by this time.
Yeah, normal twelve year olds don't run around with knives and hatchets. This is not a normal twelve year old, or at least not normal except for coming from a sink estate.
I'm the worst potential audience in the world for "romantasy" (and believe me, Tonstant Weader Fwowed up when I learned this neologism) so I can't speak for the mass audience of women readers of such stuff.
But I think it's more about soft porn (as per the devolution of the Anita Blake series) than romantic attention, as having two or more supernatural beings lusting after your PI/Wiccan/half-Fae heroine means you can stuff in the adult scenes that publishers crave for page-turning appeal; you can describe the ravaging by the werewolf tech executive founder of the billion-dollar startup on pages sixteen to twenty, then go for the seduction by the vampire biker gang leader on pages thirty to thirty four, and maybe throw in some will they-won't they UST between your hard-boiled heroine and her on-again/off-again boyfriend who's a half-demon sorceror running his own rival paranormal detective agency sprinkled all through the novel (volume six of the fifteen - and growing! - volume Susie Superb, Witch Attorney series, on sale in every good bookstore now!)
See Laurell Hamilton's Merry Gentry series, where she completely lost the plot, as the main focus is "I gotta get pregnant so I need to bang every single hot guy I encounter". All this is for ostensibly magical purposes, so that's why she has to have sex with fairies, humans, every other supernatural being, etc., but that's only the figleaf for "and now here's sexual encounter number fifty-six".
EDIT: I think the main difference between men and women readers of erotica (shall we say) is that the guys will go straight for the Hawt Action without much need for justifying it, but women need a lead in (hence the establishing of the love-hate relationship between Hot Guy Numbers One Through Four and the heroine before they bang, or the Merry Gentry "The Goddess said we have to bang so we can get our old magic powers back. Yeah, it's a divine command, so strip now").
HereAndGone
1mo ago
They both annoyed me, I think the anime even more because it's so horrible and is desecrating what remains of the corpse of public art. The video is "lower class criminals-in-training behave like such in public" which, unhappily, is too common to evoke more than "for feck's sake, where are the parents?"
HereAndGone
1mo ago
Seems he and his wife engage in philanthropy, and they founded the Ballmer Group in 2015 which both manages his wealth and is a grantmaker for liberal causes:
The Ballmer Group has also been involved in backing advocacy groups related to policies on criminal justice issues, including bail reform and expunging criminal records. It has also regularly spoken with lawmakers such as Karen Bass.
The Ballmer Group uses a "wraparound approach,” which emphasizes community action rather than being directly involved with educational issues such as K-12 personalized learning, academic standards, and curriculum. One of its largest donations was made to StriveTogether, a network of local communities helping children with economic mobility.
...In 2018, the Ballmer Group announced a $59 million, five-year investment in Social Solutions, a software company that tracks data related to nonprofit and government social service agencies. The Ballmer Group also donated $16 million to 18 nonprofits in southeast Michigan, including the American Heart Association and Planned Parenthood.
In 2022, the Ballmer Group donated to $425 million to the University of Oregon to create the Ballmer Institute for Children's Behavioral Health. It aimed to tackle mental health issues facing children.
In February 2023, the Ballmer Group stated it would provide commitments of up to $165 million to Communities in Schools to build 1,000 additional majority-low-income schools. In April 2023, the Ballmer Group provided $43 million to the state of Washington to increase the access to early childhood education. It also provided $38 million to the University of Washington to fund early childhood educator scholarships. In May 2023, the Ballmer Group stated it would provide $42.5 million over the next five years to support more than 100 Black-led nonprofits focused on improving economic mobility.
So yeah, getting persuaded into (or maybe it was his own idea) backing a media literacy initiative to snatch a brand from the burning by informing the Americans at risk of voting for Trump that this would be bad and wrong, here's the right information you should believe, sounds on-brand for the guy.
HereAndGone
1mo ago
They leave shit loads of comments.
Definitely. All the "wow this is amazing" and "thanks for this, I loved it" comments under really terrible quality Youtube videos which are full of errors and AI-voiced, if not AI-generated? I mean, they could be real people who really think this is great, but bots have now replaced "hire people overseas for peanuts to leave positive comments and reviews on your garbage on all kinds of sites".
HereAndGone
1mo ago
I don't know much about the guy apart from recognising the name, but he seems to be leftish in his politics so probably a generic liberal who votes Democrat, and that is what the "just the facts for the citizens" initiative will be: did you know, dear hard-working American Joe or Jane, that the wicked misinformation and disinformation around [insert hot button topic of the moment] coming from the MAGA extremists is wrong and false and bad and yeah it might be technically true sometimes about some things but it's still bad and evil and you shouldn't be influenced by it?
Generally that's what I think as soon as I see the words "nonpartisan civic initiative" used about government or political material: oh, this is more Democratic PACs in action. Sometimes, they're Republican PACs.
HereAndGone
1mo ago
Daily Record
This is a Scottish newspaper, so it's local rather than national, unlike The Sun or The Daily Mirror (and you get regional versions of those, e.g. The Irish Sun). A lot of the daily papers got hoovered up by the Murdoch behemoth and brought downmarket as tabloids to become profitable. Your question is a bit like asking "Why do you need the Minnesota Star-Tribune, isn't USA Today enough?"
HereAndGone
1mo ago
Since you don't give this option, I'll have to record "neither" as my answer here. The anime image is stupid annoying, the video is "why are these brats running around with knives and hatchets in public? they need discipline, have they no parents rearing them?" In a slightly different context, this would be "little thugs attack ordinary person going about their business in broad daylight".
HereAndGone
1mo ago
And yet, this fake image (and the countless others in the replies below) elicits much stronger emotions and sympathy from me than the real video.
Friend, if crappy bog-standard AI beige cartoons that are blinkin' well everywhere elicit strong reactions of sympathy from you, congratulations, you are Pavlov's dog.
Which probably is the entire problem in a nutshell, now I come to think of it.
Does anyone else hate that cartoony style because of over-exposure to it, even for 'serious' discussions of topics? I was about ready to throw a glass at the screen when Freddie deBoer used the crappy cartoony bastardised-Ghibli chibi of Joe Rogan, for pete's sake!
HereAndGone
1mo ago
Yeah, it's tough for men. But for women, it's not attention as "here you are as a person", it's "here's boobs on legs". Visibility, sure, but might as well be invisibility. Some women work that angle, but when you're fourteen and growing into womanly features this kind of "every male from fourteen to forty is looking at my tits" is not the boon it might appear.
HereAndGone
1mo ago
She got everything handed to her on a plate (and, um, if she's Lil' Ms Genius, how come she's not back in Wakanda doing high high high level super science?) and still complained. Disparu went a bit too hard on the series, but he's not wrong: she bitches about what good is a degree, it'll only get her (a really good high-paying doing science) job, then she's all shocked Pikachu face! when they go "okay then, you don't want a second chance, you're expelled".
She's aware right from the start that the Hood and gang are a bunch of criminals, there's no "oh well maybe they're just misunderstood, maybe they're actual urban revolutionaries". Nope, she jumped straight at "violence? crime? murder? for money? gimme gimme gimme!"
That "am I supposed to know who you are?" line to Mephistopheles isn't as smart as she thinks, because now if she's messing around with magic, she better know who is who in that world. But of course this is Riri Williams, Know-It-All Brat, and she can't be bothered to learn anything because she already knows it all. Tony Stark, when faced with the fallout of what he's been building all along, decides to go the hero route. Riri goes straight to "I don't wanna work, I want free stuff, I want money, if I have to commit crime and sell my soul to the Devil, no problem".
Tony Stark was Tony Stark from the start, he was being shown around as a kid genius from the age of four. That's not the family weapons industry at work there. And yeah, box of scraps in a cave, as against Riri being handed the tech from the start and then stealing it because she's incapable of producing her own.
That's not "more interesting" as character arc, that's straight up "she's dumb and evil".
HereAndGone
1mo ago
All that is very true, but they managed to also appeal to a female audience with baby Yoda and the Mandalorian being the protective figure there. I mean, there's a decent and simple plot that was difficult to mess up (until they managed to do so).
HereAndGone
1mo ago
I'm old enough to have been there when the first Star Wars movie was released (mid-teens), and I honestly never thought Lucas would get the second and third sets of trilogies made.
Now it's almost a shame that happened.
HereAndGone
1mo ago
Hello! I have just rewritten the Kzinti, where the males are smart and the females are dumb breeding machines!
Ah well, you gave me a laugh at least.
HereAndGone
1mo ago
Yeah, unfortunately it's the bingo card approach to writing characters (do they tick off all the right boxes?) and then any kind of development or interesting use goes by the wayside, because any criticism can then be safely dismissed as review bombing by the haters who are white straight cis male racist homophobe etc. etc. etc.
HereAndGone
1mo ago
She also, uncritically, enjoys the second trilogy, which I can't excuse on any level except the second film, which I will defend as decent.
Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn, Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi. Oh, yes. Worth suffering through Jar-Jar Binks and horrible little Anakin for. And Natalie Portman's costumes in the first movie are gorgeous. Hayden Christensen? Eh, Anakin is a whiny spoiled brat so that's tough to pull off, but the Master-Padawan relationships (and the betrayal involved) make it work.
HereAndGone
1mo ago
Like, you really go through life keenly aware that most men you interact with are at least some level of interested in you? Just because? As the default?
Mate, in the last Culture War thread we had someone on here commenting about that immigrant case saying that sure, it's totes normal for an adult man to want to bang a 15 year old girl (because men are wired to be attracted to youth and fertility). Women do learn early that simply having boobs and a pulse gets you male attention in the "I'd hit that" sense. Not that they're interested in you as a person, that's where the fantasy wish-fulfilment comes in.
HereAndGone
1mo ago
Robert Downey Junior retires, and they replace Iron Man with a sassy black lady.
Even worse, a character who is the worst stereotypes about "urban youth". If you were trying to write eat hot chip and lie deliberately you couldn't have done it better.
Riri Williams originates nothing of her own, she works on Tony Stark's original tech to 'refine' it, she steals (literally) the Iron Man suit, gets rightfully expelled for being a massive pain in the backside, goes around then with a chip on her entitled shoulders about how this is unfair and it's only Because I Is Black. Falls in with a gang of weirdoes and criminals, knows they are criminals, happily goes along with crime and violence for money, blackmails a guy who is trying to avoid going down the same path his villain father did, frames him for her crimes so he ends up in prison, and then ends up literally selling her soul to the actual Devil, all of this knowingly and with full consent because she thinks she is Just That Special. (Disparu had great fun reviewing the series).
HereAndGone
1mo ago
What I've heard of the last Indiana Jones movie is depressing. They could have handled "guy gets older, his adventuring days are naturally now behind him, he can retire to that long-delayed happy domestic life and honored retirement with the respect of his colleagues and students after one last hurrah handing over the reins to the new hero/ine" but no, they had to ruin Indy for the cheap jokes.
HereAndGone
1mo ago
I mean, I'm a girl (at least a good while ago) and I like SF and I thought they ruined "John Carter" because they didn't know what to do with it or how to market it - dropping "of Mars" from the title was the first signal they hadn't a clue.
There will always be more boys than girls who like certain properties, and even for the girls who like the SF properties, the way they handled things was terrible. Who on earth liked the Force witches or whatever the hell these things are supposed to be? (Just a hint here, if you're doing a sacred mystic ritual, try not to have it look like an am-dram society pretending to have epileptic seizures).
"The Mandalorian" worked because the female appeal was Pedro Pascal plus baby Yoda (and I understand the female lead was not actively terrible in a Girlboss mode, so of course Disney bounced her for badthink) while having enough of the SW lore to appeal to the guys. The later SW movies with Rey could have worked if they'd concentrated more on the ensemble of Ray and Poe and Finn (and had managed to retain a coherent plot arc, instead of every new director deciding to drag the plot in a different direction). Also don't fuck up Luke's character, but they couldn't resist doing that.
But as it is, the properties they get their sticky fingers on are then revamped to lose the core audience (coughRingsofPowercough) and introduce the Girlboss who has to be so much better than the icky Patriarchy. Girls who aren't interested in SF won't watch this stuff, girls who are and like the original IP will be turned off, boys won't watch it either, and so the expensive new series that is going to be the star show of the streaming service falls flat on its face.
And then they do it all over again with a new one.
My immediate impressions is that this was a young person drifting through life, no particular job or engagement with anyone, and just blamed everything going wrong for them on 'society' or whatever, and decided to get fame and notoriety by this attack. I don't think there's anything more coherent behind it than lack of connections, lack of direction, and a desire that "at least this way people will know who I am and talk about me".
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