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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31641 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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Sam Brinton Warrant Issued—Biden Official Accused of Stealing Luggage Again

A felony arrest warrant has been issued for Brinton, who is non-binary, after accusations they stole luggage from the Harry Reid International Airport, Las Vegas TV station KLAS reported.

The charge is for grand larceny with a value between $1,200 and $5,000, the warrant states.

Grand larceny is a category B felony in Nevada and punishable by one to 10 years in prison and a fine up to $10,000.

So I think it's safe to say I believe that that Tweet thread that accused him of having a continually escalating fetish was right. IIRC there was some criticism of the Tweeter's objectivity and credentials, but I guess even a broken clock..

I suppose my reaction could be called bigoted but I'm not surprised by this, nor was I surprised by the initial charges or even the claims that he was playing out a sexual fetish. In fact, I found it highly more plausible than the alternative given his bizarre behavior and reported lies when confronted.

Taken as a whole, I am more likely to distrust someone who shows such suspect behavior while also apparently being hellbent on signaling deviancy. Not a good combination.

EDIT: Strong language edit.

Deleted, I just scrolled further down to this comment which was the same link. Ignore me!

The sources all seem to point back to one local news blurb. Assuming that no one has inflated the story, made anything up, etc...isn’t it still pretty vague evidence? Nothing about motive. Certainly not enough to vindicate the Twitter psychiatrists.

I’m not going to be too surprised if they did it again, mind you. As stupid as it would be to do it again, it was pretty dumb the first time, too. And the first incident alone ought to be disqualifying for a top-level nuclear clearance. But I’m going to wait to draw conclusions regarding sexuality/fetishes until actual evidence shows up.

Two events is a pattern, the pattern is one of escalation, and circumstantial evidence, while not proof, is still evidence.

I would like to see a third instance, that would be an undeniable pattern. The first excuse was pretty implausible. If they say anything in regard to the second one, that will be interesting (can they try the "oops I thought it was mine" again?) but if a third suitcase turns up stolen, then that's it bunky.

This significantly downgrades the probability that it was a honest mistake the first time. I'm still going to wait for more information before believing that it's a fetish, instead of some other retarded motivation. We don't even know if this one belonged to a woman, let alone looked like it belonged to a woman.

(if you want to steal bags you do it at bars and restaurants in tourist areas, like all other thiefs, not in an airport)

if you want to steal bags you do it at bars and restaurants in tourist areas, like all other thiefs, not in an airport

Do we expect a busy deputy assistant secretary to buy their own luggage? Much more efficient to source suitcases that have demonstrated they can stand up to airport baggage handling when on-site yourself! This frees up more time and money for future crimes against fashion and assaults on the eyeballs of onlookers 😁

According to Rolling Stone the bag belonged to a woman (but they don't say how obvious that was):

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/sam-brinton-biden-nuclear-waste-official-luggage-theft-1234644687/

Las Vegas’ 8 News Now reported on Thursday that a felony warrant has been issued for Brinton regarding a second incident of stolen luggage, this time at Harry Reid International Airport. Brinton is wanted on charges of grand larceny for items with a value between $1,200 and $5,000.

According to the declaration of warrant, which was reviewed by Rolling Stone, the theft took place in July of this year. The case was initially closed as law enforcement failed to identify Brinton, who was captured on CCTV footage removing a woman’s luggage from baggage claim. Following news reports of the incident in Minneapolis, the detective assigned to the case recognized Brinton.

Oh, you have to love this detail from that article:

Law enforcement secured an identification by cross referencing the clothing they were wearing in security footage — a shirt with a rainbow atomic nuclear symbol — with social media posts from the day the luggage was stolen.

Not exactly dealing with a criminal mastermind here, are we? Maybe don't wear the same clothes as you've publicly posted when about to commit a theft? Though I do like how the political posturing ended up hoisting them on their own petard: "I'm out! I'm proud! I'm - about to go to the chokey!" The Daily Mail (which I acknowledge is not the best of sources, but they're great for stuff like this) has the story, including the photos of said T-shirt on the security footage and selfie. And looks like Brinton did the tag-checking thing again so they knew the case belonged to a woman:

When a Las Vegas Metropolitan police officer reviewed surveillance video, the officer 'observed several nonverbal cues, or body language anomalies, from the suspect, which caught his attention,' the report stated.

'Specifically, Brinton pulled the victim's luggage from the carousel and examined the tag.

'Then placed it back on the carousel, looking in all directions for anyone who might be watching, or might approach.

'Pulling it back off the carousel and demonstrating the same behavior by looking around before walking away with it quickly.'

This is exactly the behaviour that Brinton is alleged to have done with the first suitcase theft:

A suspect was not identified until a police officer saw a news article in November naming Brinton as a suspect in luggage theft at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport in September.

The criminal complaint from the incident in Minneapolis describes how Brinton traveled from Washington DC to Minneapolis without a checked bag, but then retrieved one from the luggage carousel once they'd landed in Minnesota.

Surveillance footage from the airport - which is yet to be released - is said to show them removing the luggage tug from the bag and placing it in their handbag.

Ooooh and now comes the "throwing under the bus", with questioning of Brinton's origin story by former allies:

Brinton claims to have been the victim of horrific torture at the hands of a conversion therapist, allegations that jumpstarted their career as an activist. Other LGBTQ+ advocates have raised concerns regarding the veracity of Brinton’s claims, pointing to inconsistencies in the timeline, and stonewalling by Brinton regarding the identity or even location of the therapist.

On Wednesday, Truth Wins Out (an anti-conversion therapy advocacy group) founding Executive Director Wayne Besen accused prominent LGBTQ+ activist groups of ignoring “clear warning signs” and engaging in “sloppy, ethically negligent, and shockingly unprofessional” behavior in elevating Brinton without thoroughly vetting their background.

The fascinating thing is that Brinton can look ordinary when they try; if they had gone around looking like this rather than like this (and kept the puppy play and rope bondage pics on the down low), then this story probably wouldn't be getting the same level of attention as it is.

Another hypothesis (not committing to it, but just putting it out there):

The thefts may be intentionally gendered, but in a non-fetishistic way. Concretely, Brinton may carry a lot of resentment toward women, for having the social space to buy and wear the clothing designated as "for women." Stealing them allows him/they to enact a kind of an eye for an eye kind of justice: society has unjustly taken away my ability to present as a woman without repercussions, so I'm going to level the playing field by taking away from you the material goods denied to me so I can use them.

I don't think so. He doesn't conform to norms of dress already.

Seizing the means of reproduction? I don’t think you need to get so Marxist.

Last week I observed that I wouldn’t be able to tell $300 luggage from $3000. I would recognize a few logos of women’s brands, though. Attack of stupid opportunity, maybe?

Something tells me he/she will not see jail time. The usual community service and public contrition. I don't know what compels someone to throw their career away for something so stupid.

I think there's enough evidence out there that the guy is really weird and doesn't make conventional decisions before all the luggage stealing.

Would someone who steals a couple of suitcases generally receive a prison sentence?

Should someone who steals a couple of suitcases – in general – receive a prison sentence? Maybe if it was a repeat offence, but for the first conviction, it seems excessive.

This is a repeat offense though. The first suitcase + contents was over $1,000 so it's not like he shoplifted a candy bar.

Article says the charge carries a sentence of 1-10 years in prison. I'm assuming, the American justice system being what it is, that typically we're looking at the very low end of that range, some portion of which is replaced by parole.

he should. Jails exist for criminals. He committed a crime, ergo jail time.

If a normal executive abruptly turned kleptomanic, would you expect jail time? I would not.

Me neither. The odds that this person will go to jail are about zero.

That's an interesting question. Are there "klepto therapy" vacation resorts for the wealthy/politicians, the way there are drug and sex-addiction rehab centers they volunteer to go to instead of taking a prison sentence?

Jails exist for criminals.

So do fines. And lethal injections.

Yeah, I can't imagine this resulting in jailtime regardless of who the professional is. I'd imagine some people are going to chalk that up to bias, in the pro-LGBT sense in this case, or in a generic "jail is for poor people" sense in the case of a generic professional... but professionals are professionals because they've already demonstrated their ability to be generally productive, law-abiding members of society. Clearly something has gone wrong in a case like this one, but someone who was productive and law-abiding and has stopped being so seems like a better bet for treatment/rehabilitation than someone who has never been productive and law-abiding at all.

My bet is treatment and community service, which seems entirely appropriate given the situation.

On the other hand, repeat offender.

Two stolen suitcases is “beyond reasonable doubt” that he has a fetish that he can’t control, probably related to the idea of stealing the identity of a woman and/or her clothes (imo). If he merely liked to steal, he is smart enough to realize that he shouldn’t steal at an airport again. Instead, he has a fixation on stealing women’s luggage from the airport specifically. He would not have been able to make it this far in his career if he simply couldn’t control himself with stealing any random object. This perfectly mirrors his identity as a man that likes to dress and appear as a woman, and who likes to receive attention based on the strangeness of his doing so (his interviews, manner of speaking demonstrate this).

The danger of such a person in government is that he could decide to steal secrets for attention. If he gets off at transgressing his identity, then he may get off as transgressing his identity as an American government employee.

This happened just recently, when an MTF transgender military officer — the first in history — tried to give private medical information to a Russian spy. This transgressed his identity as a military officer, Then there’s Bradley Manning, who leaked information to WikiLeaks, transgressing his identity as an intelligence officer.

The base rate of transgenders in these sorts of positions is… half a percent total makeup? Probably much less? So if you imagine 200x more of these crimes, surely that’s an overrepresentation.

Conditional on actually committing this second crime—two suitcases is “beyond reasonable doubt” that he’s unfit for office. It doesn’t say anything about whether he’s jerking it to stolen socks. That’s plausible, but the suitcases alone are not evidence.

identity as a military/intelligence officer

I don’t think you’re using identity in the same way as most any LGBT person. Are you the same guy who argued his pronouns were “American/Christian/son”?

I don’t think you’re using identity in the same way as most any LGBT person

Uh, yeah, I think we all picked up on that. Seems rather intentional.

In a previous comment, you asserted that Manning leaked the documents because she wanted to "flee from" or "subvert" her "true identity". The comment initially claimed Manning had fled to Russia; when someone pointed out that this was false, that it was in fact Edward Snowden (a cis-het man, it may be worth pointing out) who had moved to Russia, you removed the claim from your comment, but apparently did not update your overall theory. A comment of mine citing Manning's testimony regarding her motivation for spying, which contradicted your theory, was likewise ignored.

This entire theory of trans people doing something bad because they want to "transgress their identity" is based on a handful of cherrypicked examples. I could just as easily pick a bunch of convicted spies to make the exact opposite argument. Consider Jonathan Pollard, one of the most notorious cases of espionage in US history. He was a Jewish-American, who, by supplying classified information to Israel, was staying true to his Jewish identity and refusing to sell out and assimilate. Or Steven John Lalas, a Greek-American who supplied classified information to Greece. Even after being convicted, both were proud of what they did, which was standing up for people belonging to their identity group.

All three of your examples, far from being "beyond reasonable doubt", are in fact based entirely on unfounded speculation and cherrrypicking.

Yes I thanked the commenter for the correction. Were Bradley to flee to Russia that would count as additional evidence for; that he didn’t, doesn’t dissolve the other evidence for. By “flee from identity” I mean that Bradley had an urge to escape or avoid their identity. By flee I don’t mean literally running away. This flight is psychological, based on an avoidant coping strategy for the person’s inability to accept their true nature and its accompanying emotional baggage. But I do think it’s also possible that instead of avoiding their identity, the desire is a transgression. So in that sense yes I have updated my theory.

I’m ignoring Bradley’s own testimony because I don’t trust it. The transgender military officer wax’d poetic about loving America; yet he still did what he did, demonstrating a total disregard for America. I don’t exactly trust the outwardly presented motives here when my very theory is based on conflict between identity and transgression/avoidance.

The danger of such a person in government is that he could decide to steal secrets for attention. If he gets off at transgressing his identity, then he may get off as transgressing his identity as an American government employee.

IMO the bigger problem is just being blackmailed, or abusing power to hide the original minor felony.

Two stolen suitcases is “beyond reasonable doubt” that he has a fetish that he can’t control

It's hardly that. It's good evidence that he is in fact a thief, but it's not good evidence as to why he is a thief. As I pointed out in another comment, even someone stealing two bags at random would expect to get two women's bags about 25% of the time. When purely random targeting would yield the same results with decent frequency, the case is not settled beyond a reasonable doubt as to what his motives are.

People's argument basically boils down to "he's a sexual deviant in other ways, so this behavior must be related to his sexual deviancy". But that's a poor argument. I have the bad habit of drinking too much soda, it doesn't mean that if I steal two bags that it must be because I thought there was soda inside.

I don't think this is sexual fetish as such, but Brinton did look at the baggage tags. Now, if the tags just said "S. Smith", then it could be a guy's case. But if it was "Sally Smith", then they know this is (probably) a woman's case.

While we're all playing Herr Professor Freud here, I wonder if this is Brinton's way of getting back at their parents. The origin story is that they came out as bi to their Southern Baptist missionary parents, who sent them off to a 'conversion camp' for two years. Are the suitcases Brinton is stealing the type of cases their parents, particularly their mother, used on travels? Is this a subconscious attempt to both defy and shame the punitive parents by engaging in condemned behaviours? Yeah well who knows, we'll have to wait and see what happens after the court case in Minnesota (first) and then what happens in Nevada (the second alleged theft):

Samuel Brinton, the Department of Energy's (DOE) deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition, was charged Thursday with grand larceny of an item valued between $1,200 and $5,000 by Las Vegas prosecutors. Records showed that an arrest warrant was issued for Brinton, one of the few federal officials to ever identify as nonbinary.

...Brinton is scheduled to appear at a court hearing in Minnesota state court later this month to face similar charges from a September incident at the Minneapolis St. Paul Airport (MSP). Police accused Brinton of stealing a suitcase worth $2,325 from an MSP baggage carousel Sept. 16, according to a criminal complaint filed Oct. 26.

You’re not accounting for the full information available.

  • He specifically wants to steal suitcases.

  • He leaves the suitcases he steals in his hotel room.

  • Knowing that he is being extra scrutinized, he still chooses to steal suitcases at an airport rather than a thrift store or somewhere less risky.

  • There is evidence he does not steal random objects routinely (his gainful employment), yet that packed suitcases specifically are irresistible.

  • He loves to dress like a woman which is pretty good evidence for a motive, and humans commit crimes for motives. He is obsessed with this identity. There is no financial or acquisitive motive (left suitcase in room).

I thought he left the suitcases' contents in hotel rooms but allegedly kept and used the suitcases themselves?

They claimed they left the woman's clothes behind in the hotel room but not the suitcase which they took with them, but the hotel denied that any clothing had been left in the room.

I hadn’t read that but if true it would poke a hole in my theory

He claimed he did that, but the hotel denied it.

That was his story in the middle. I'd be curious to (have somebody else) search his drawers though, to see if there's evidence of trophy-taking.

This story's continued popularity seems to be a combination of "man bites dog" (and it is funny), and specifically claims that "wokeness" degrades the quality of government, and that LGBT people are weird fetishists. From twitter, searching "Brinton": "Raise your hand if you knew Sam Brinton was mentally ill before any luggage was stolen", Re. Sam Brinton, let's call it what it is: a person clearly unfit for a high-level national security role was hired because the Admin prioritizes wokeness over competence. (not cherrypicked, those and paraphrases of them were the top results). While Brinton is being retarded, taking this as something bad about 'wokeness' or 'lgbts' is about as bad as taking every base-rate sex crime by a republican as evidence for pedocon theory. There are many LGBTs in the government, at least a dozen of which have been in the R news cycle in the past few years. Many casual politics observers hear these random events and say "wow, those libs are fucked up, man" - all that does is confuse one and make it harder to pick out serious trends. And people with power having strange proclivities isn't new. (and as usual, this isn't a point about how LGBTS are good and all evidence against them is BAD, but a point about good and bad evidence for broad political points)

edit: removed jinx doublepost of LGBTQnation article

There are many LGBTs in the government, at least a dozen of which have been in the R news cycle in the past few years.

Well, there is a difference between LGBT government person who looks like this and LGBT government person who looks like this.

It may be unfair, but if Second Person is accused of stealing women's suitcases, it is going to be treated as "look at that weirdo, this is exactly what you'd expect". If you dress like Gen Z Joker, expect to be treated like the Joker.

Old-school LGBT versus new era LGBT in one photo.

For wokeness, it says something bad because even if there aren't many woke women's clothing thieves, there are many woke people who support the standards that enable the women's clothing thieves.

It's still a single event - and if its about 'wokeness' and not specifically trans people, wokeness or AA has put hundreds of gay/lesbian and BIPOC/female/minorities in the 'government' construed broadly, so it isn't surprising one of them does something wrong.

Again my argument isn't 'wokeness good', just that 'random person commits random society norm break' isn't great evidence

wokeness or AA has put hundreds of gay/lesbian and BIPOC/female/minorities in the 'government' construed broadly

I think this can happen to various degrees. Someone like this getting a position is more attributable to wokeness than someone who's gay but dresses normally and isn't a public advocate.

I believe the answer to that theory is that there are far, far fewer LGBT people than there are conservative republicans, and probably fewer than there are actual factual far right, so LGBT being common in stories about government workers doing weird shit says more than it does when conservative republicans commit sex crimes.

There's probably a good answer here in crime statistics, and I wouldn't be surprised if LGBTs have a 50% higher rate of petty theft than non-LBGBT, although 30% lower rate wouldn't be surprising either, probably all sorts of confounders. But news stories about individual actions of e.g. politicians are so heavily selected for interestingness that drawing conclusions about general LGBT weirdness is a mistake! It's much better to draw conclusions on LGBT weirdness from e.g. /r/transgender or something, as rdrama.net does.

Now then, if Hallock had been caught stealing women's luggage (twice), would it be as popular in the news? I think it would be close, but I can't confirm that

I don't think it would be? There are hundreds of deputary assistant undersecretaries, and at least one of them will have committed some wacky crime statistically, but I haven't heard of it. We heard about Sam not just because they were trans, but because Sam had media interest before the thefts both for being a brave LGBT person on govt from the center-left and for being a biden nominee while looking like that from the right.

Just how broad or narrow are we talking before we can generalize at all

"generalizing" is fine because lots of people have things in common, e.g. jews having high IQ. But it's better to grasp that jews have high IQ by reading a list of nobel prize winners or a page on the history of mathematics or physics, instead of because a few "smart" talk show hosts are jewish. I'm not saying "dont make negative generalizations that is bigoted".

Would you be more agreeable if instead of using Brinton as a sledgehammer on "LGBT writ large," it was narrowed down to, say, "public advocates of dehumanizing kinks"?

no because it's still dumb, there are millions of people who like disgusting kinks, you can read about thousands of them online. more here.

All sorts of things that are bad ideas aren't new; not sure of the point here.

Such proclivities (compare to random politicians doing sex crimes) were still common before trans people were appointed to offices, or even before gay marriage was allowed, or even before gay sex was legal, suggesting none of those are causative.

Would you be more agreeable if instead of using Brinton as a sledgehammer on "LGBT writ large," it was narrowed down to, say, "public advocates of dehumanizing kinks"?

no because it's still dumb, there are millions of people who like disgusting kinks, you can read about thousands of them online. more here.

I think the key phrase here is "public advocates of".

Most people who have kinks don't advocate them very publically, and even most of those don't look or dress any different from normal in professional situations.

Except the legalisation of gay sex didn't create gay people, the people who would now call themselves gay would have then called themselves straight, because it was illegal to do otherwise. Not that I think every gay person is a criminal or every criminal is gay, just that that is exceptionally poor reasoning.

and we would've heard about if it had happened

Do you think "Joe Smith, Deputy Assistant Undersecretary of HUD in a republican administration, stole a woman's purse" would end up on either CNN or Fox?

Yes. It would be a top story on CNN. The talking heads on the weekend shows would go on about how this showed the failure of the administration to properly vet its people.

J. Edgar Hoover is still remembered for crossdressing to this day and it may not even be true.

J. Edgar Hoover was also an absolute bipartisan titan of American politics and government in a way that I don't think anyone has been since, probably, Colon Powell? Maybe David Petraeus, but Petraeus went down fast when he got got. Nobody in government today will be remembered half as much as Hoover.

Hoover was well known for playing power politics with other government officials, including elected officials, and even hoarding blackmail on celebrities. He played rough, Lyndon Johnson's famous quote about "it's better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in" was about Hoover, and referred to Hoover's propensity towards attack politics against his enemies. The most powerful president in recent American history did not believe he could dislodge Hoover. Hoover's dirty tricks campaigns are legendary:

In 1956, Hoover was becoming increasingly frustrated by U.S. Supreme Court decisions that limited the Justice Department's ability to prosecute people for their political opinions, most notably communists. Some of his aides reported that he purposely exaggerated the threat of communism to "ensure financial and public support for the FBI."[59] At this time he formalized a covert "dirty tricks" program under the name COINTELPRO.[60] COINTELPRO was first used to disrupt the Communist Party USA, where Hoover ordered observation and pursuit of targets that ranged from suspected citizen spies to larger celebrity figures, such as Charlie Chaplin, whom he saw as spreading Communist Party propaganda.[61]

COINTELPRO's methods included infiltration, burglaries, setting up illegal wiretaps, planting forged documents, and spreading false rumors about key members of target organizations.[62] Some authors have charged that COINTELPRO methods also included inciting violence and arranging murders.[63][64]

This program remained in place until it was exposed to the public in 1971, after the burglary by a group of eight activists of many internal documents from an office in Media, Pennsylvania, whereupon COINTELPRO became the cause of some of the harshest criticism of Hoover and the FBI.

Another President, Truman, said:

...we want no Gestapo or secret police. The FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail. J. Edgar Hoover would give his right eye to take over, and all congressmen and senators are afraid of him.

Hoover was simply a much bigger deal than anyone in politics today will ever be.

Also, the cross-dressing in particular may or may not be true, but Hoover was absolutely a fag. He never married, and no one has any evidence of his heterosexuality, while even his friends go on the record about his homosexuality.

Some people associated with Hoover have supported the rumors about his homosexuality.[155] According to Anthony Summers, Hoover often frequented New York City's Stork Club. Luisa Stuart, a model who was 18 or 19 at the time, told Summers that she had seen Hoover holding hands with Tolson as they all rode in a limo uptown to the Cotton Club in 1936.[126]

Actress and singer Ethel Merman was a friend of Hoover's since 1938, and familiar with all parties during his alleged romance of Lela Rogers. In a 1978 interview and in response to Annita Bryant's anti-gay campaign, she said: "Some of my best friends are homosexual: Everybody knew about J. Edgar Hoover, but he was the best chief the FBI ever had."

It'd may have been more newsworthy in the past, but Hoover was in the public eye much much more than a deputy secretary of waste management or natural parks, and public distaste for things like that has declined al ot.

specifically claims that "wokeness" degrades the quality of government

Any ideology that prioritizes identity over competence is going to degrade the quality of what it does.

that LGBT people are weird fetishists.

No, not "all LBGT", just this one.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170708031332/http://www.metroweekly.com/2016/01/puppy-love-mid-atlantic-leather-2016/

and that LGBT people are weird fetishists

Very imprecise term, probably deliberately on the part of its creators.

The idea that the acronym represents some unified group (in terms of making predictions about fetishes and other psychological issues) is debatable, it's frankly debatable that even something more limited like "trans" can be narrowed down to one thing (see Blanchard's typology)

There are many LGBTs in the government, at least a dozen of which have been in the R news cycle in the past few years.

Case in point. Let's say I believe that men are just more prone to sex crimes. This tells me very little then since it may have just been a banner year for lesbians and trans-identified females.

As far as I’m aware this is one of only two high ranking government officials with a trans identity (it could be more but these are the only two I think that are visible). And already one has been outed for sexual deviancy. Not a great base rate, and very bad optics if you’re seeking greater trans acceptance

That isn't what "base rate" means, base rate would be "rate in a larger population", not "rate among people who I've heard of in the news". Most obviously, taking 'two trans in government' as true, there are other high status positions with only few trans people - powerful executives (such as martine rothblatt ), celebrities, transgender state legislators. Each category increases the overall sample size, making 'one in two' much less obvious.

Also, they aren't transgender - "Brinton is bisexual.[9] Brinton, the first openly gender-fluid individual in federal government leadership, uses they and them pronouns.[1][5][6]". Transgender is sometimes used to include 'nonbinary/genderfluid' descriptively, but more in the 'everyone is queer uwu' sense than a literal one.

In terms of base rates, of the dozens of productive and competent transwoman software engineers I know of (whose economic value outweighs occasional purse theft) ... a decent few are 'sexual deviants', but almost none of them have committed crimes related to it.

Also, this isn't "outing" brinton as a sexual deviant, they were publicly a kink activist and did drag beforehand.

Also, they aren't transgender

Wait, isn’t transitioning from a male gender to a gender fluid a kind of transgenderism?

Also why do you assume you know the criminal history of people you know? Most crimes go undetected

a decent few are 'sexual deviants', but almost none of them have committed crimes related to it

That you know of.

I don't think 'committing crimes [i.e. things like 'stealing luggage' not 'ordering unlicensed HRT'] related to sexual deviancy' is something >1 in 10 trans people do? do you disagree?

I really don't have any reasonable basis to either agree or disagree. My uninformed prior is that weirdo sex perverts (not generically LGBT, mind) probably commit roughly equivalent crimes or worse at around that rate.

Why would being into kink (one class of "weirdo sex perverts") indicate a high rate of committing crimes? It's mostly just a niche interest.

As a tangent - one example I happened to come across - aphyr, the jepsen guy, is quite kinky (obviously nsfw). Jepsen is an incredibly useful project for measuring and improving distributed systems - a good read here. So this is a serious, smart, and useful person. Yet - he isn't just kinky, he directly links from his programming blog to his mastodon account, where he RTs naked bound dudes and posts nsfw pics of himself along with posting about databases. And this with the words - "I've got a Mastodon account for snarky jokes, databases, and leather" - most won't intuit what "leather" means before they click and see a 250lb guy's ass. I've actually been to aphyr.com for programming stuff a dozen times - the technical interview series is based as shit, without noticing that. Most kinky people I either know personally, or know of, are just ... smart people who are kinky.

Tangent tangent - This is a great example of my opinion on "the LGBTs are awful deviants who are undermining civilization" - even if aphyr's homosexuality took a hundred prime age men out of the breeding pool, jepsen's utility to a networked society greatly outweighs it, and this guy's contribution to society is much more than a hundred 100iq people who have children. Being gay is a misuse or twisting of sexuality towards unnatural and meaningless ends, but ... it is so in a way that coexists with the infinitely complex interconnection of physical causation, and said physical causation is not bringing down society, while complex technical achievements are making society even more capable!

this guy's contribution to society is much more than a hundred 100iq people who have children

Smart computer guy with no kids versus ordinary people who have kids - where do you think "society" comes from? If nobody is having children but they are all software whizzes, then after their generation there won't be anyone there to use this wonderful project they created.

I don't know what Jepsen is, I don't know what distributed systems are, but at the end of the day, things are made for people, not people for things. The eventual effect is that all this Smart People Stuff is on the backs of Average Normies who buy, use, consume and need things that they have no idea are dependent at several removes on the Smart People Stuff, but at the same time, without the mass of Average Normies driving the economy because they use, buy, consume and need things, the work the Smart People do would be meaningless.

To be clear, that was a rebuttal to "the LGBTs are actively destroying society". I'd obviously prefer if jepsen was straight and had children.

things are made for people, not people for things.

Which people, though? People can only have purpose to the extent they experience, act, or relate - and more intelligent, capable, and complex people do all of those more, and with more depth, than less so. Which is more or less the same as being more 'productive', whether technically or artistically or intellectually or politically, or even in some other inscrutable personal sense.

without the mass of Average Normies driving the economy because they use, buy, consume and need things, the work the Smart People do would be meaningless.

Marginal contribution isn't "importance if entire class vanished". The US needs janitors and farmworkers a lot more in lower-tech eras than it does now.

Why would being into kink (one class of "weirdo sex perverts") indicate a high rate of committing crimes? It's mostly just a niche interest.

Particularly in the case where it is flouted at the rest of society, it is a form of aggressive norm-deviation that intuitively makes other norm deviations such as criminal activity more plausible.

As a tangent - one example I happened to come across - aphyr, the jepsen guy, is quite kinky (obviously nsfw). Jepsen is an incredibly useful project for measuring and improving distributed systems - a good read here. So this is a serious, smart, and useful person.

So? Not only is there no dispute that plenty of serious, smart, and useful LGBT people, it doesn't preclude the possibility that this particular person doesn't have more transgressive proclivities that you either don't know about or haven't manifested yet. The subject of this thread is (according to some) a serious, smart, and useful nuclear scientist.

this guy's contribution to society is much more than a hundred 100iq people who have children.

That seems dubious, but even so, you could say the same thing about, e.g., Hans Reiser. It proves nothing in itself.

Particularly in the case where it is flouted at the rest of society, it is a form of aggressive norm-deviation that intuitively makes other norm deviations such as criminal activity more plausible.

How much more plausible? 1.05x? 1.5x? 10x? The numbers aren't even the point, it's just that "makes more plausible" is a very vauge statement that covers for a lack of detailed understanding.

Also, 'being a fabulous faggot" isn't nearly as much of a 'deviation' in 2020 as it is was in 1960, to say nothing about 1860! Much of society thinks that's just great, and otherwise we wouldn't have seen the biden admin appointment.

@ rest: yeah, it was a tangent, but the general point is that if there's something wrong with being a weirdo sex pervert, there has to actually be some effect of it, even if it's complicated or indirect or suppressed knowledge, that makes it bad. Using "drag queen kink is norm deviation" + "norm deviation is correlated with norm deviation" + "this kinky drag queen did a bad norm deviation" is absurd, it's a simulacra, circular, you've entirely dodged whether there's something wrong with it!

That seems dubious

It was somewhat rhetorical, but the idea is that the causal impact of a person existing vs not existing on society is quite complicated, and people who do complex, requiring-intelligence work, especially work that improves the quality of infrastructure used by many in a scalable way, and especially work that might not have happened if they weren't there, have a counterfactual effect much larger than someone who does work that's easy, already plentiful, doesn't. have impact that scales. What, precisely, is the impact on society when an extra 100iq person exists? They do some extra accounting, watch some youtube, purchase some extra food, vibe?

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Oh shit, this is the guy who made me incredibly curious about Haskell!

It may not have been quite what he implied, but was still really valuable for my programming mindset.

Alternatively, not bad optics if the goal is to demonstrate that so-called "respectability politics" is no longer on the table, and that the mainstream media will simply refuse to mention the story. In that case it's just a power move.

In other bad news for Brinton, gay activists are starting to question his conversion therapy story:

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/12/sam-brintons-story-always-good-true/

The story does seem to have been maximised for public consumption and to bolster their cred as a champion against conversion therapy. Is there any record of what they claim being backed up by hospital visits and so forth?

Sam Brinton burst on the scene on October 1, 2010. In a riveting two-part interview with I’m from Driftwood, they revealed the most shocking conversion story activists had heard since the 1960s. It involved Brinton coming out to their parents at age 11 and their father reacting with a swift punch to their face.

“Dad just started punching,” Brinton said. “That was the first day that I was sent to the emergency room, because I had ‘fallen down the stairs.’ I was sent to the emergency room about six more times for ‘falling down the stairs’ or ‘tripping on the sidewalk.’”

“I’m in this constant state of fear,” Brinton also claimed, “My dad has held a gun up to my head multiple times.”

Brinton says that they were then sent to a cruel and sadistic Florida conversion therapist, who they saw for two or three years [Brinton’s timeline periodically changes depending on the media interview]. Brinton alleges this practitioner used aversion therapy, which included sessions where they were tortured with extreme heat, ice, and needles.

“We then went into the ‘Month of Hell,’” Brinton alleged. “The ‘Month of Hell’ consisted of tiny needles being stuck into my fingers and then pictures of explicit acts between men would be shown and I’d be electrocuted.”

I think it has been established that their parents did send them to some kind of camp, but whether the entire claims are correct is hard to prove. And yeah, it does seem that activists didn't look too closely at the story through a combination of not wanting to be seen as victim-blaming, giving ammunition to conservatives, and the story being as gruesome as possible being good tactics for the campaign to get conversion therapy banned.

Just like that teacher in the Canadian school with the fake breasts suddenly became a troll. I don't think any proof was adduced but it was spread far and wide.

It's become an increasingly common tactic with the activist left: once someone is embarrassing now the first move is just to muddy the water.

I actually don't even think this is an egregious case since some people legitimately may weigh the predictive value of public deviance lower. The above case...ugh.

“Too good to check” strikes again.

(other thread by jarjar here. Is it possible to merge stuff on this site?)

It does look like I was much too harsh on the psych, my apologies. In my defense, the way he talked about extreme escalation made his claim sound more like "you will find a trophy collection of women's fingers in his attic" than "he will steal a bag... Like, again." And a lot of the supporting details he ropes into his posts are dubious, like the Japanese blush emoji pedo spiral symbol link.

That said, his basic explanation of "it's a fetish: expect irrational fetishtic behavior patterns" is obviously sound and something to be mindful of in all these cases.

(And boy am I going to eat crow if they find a finger collection next. Cross some extras for me Sam)

All I can think is how sad it is that most everything's so lame and retarded and pointless – the war, the culture war, the zero covid war, the economy, the sacred cows. Even as the machine intelligence aims at superhuman heights, humans seem committed to degenerate to protozoa. This Brinston guy is the Nuclear Fuel Czar, give or take. In a more high-T world, he could've become a supervillain. He could've created a harem on a secret island. But instead he's... stealing women's luggage in airports? Purportedly for fetish reasons? Like, what? What is this, cringeworthy ecchi anime?

On the other hand, it seems that he pushes for novel reactor types, so that's pretty cool. Would be a pity if that project falls through due to his kleptomania.

In a more high-T world, he could've become a supervillain. He could've created a harem on a secret island.

...I guess Sam Brinton kind of looks like a more feminine Dr. Evil. Dammit, I want that Austin Powers movie now.

I guess Sam Brinton kind of looks like a more feminine Dr. Evil. Dammit, I want that Austin Powers movie now.

Nah. Liberal villains suck, I want classic Bond movie with (neo)conservative villain that had been made long ago.

Well, it hadn't been, but it should have.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/institutionalizing-the-trans-revolution/

Just a note to observe that the transgender revolution is now entering its institutionalization phase, at least among the elites. The Washington Post today sympathetically profiles Giselle Donnelly, a senior national security analyst with the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute. Giselle used to be Thomas Donnelly, who — see here — has had a long career as a national security hawk in policy circles.

...

For another, as I say in the headline, the Giselle Donnelly phenomenon represents the institutionalization of the transgender revolution. Think of it: a 65 year old man who has spent his life as a national security hawk working among conservative elites, as a fixture in one of the two most powerful right-of-center think tanks in Washington, now says he’s a woman, and presents himself as such. Those same elites — represented by Brooks and Pletka — embrace his transition uncritically. This signals to the rest of official conservative Washington that this is not only okay, but expected of them.

How it began and how it ended

"I am Ernestine Stavro Blofeld, and I expect you to respect my gender identity, Mr Bond. Once this contraption slowly submerges you into this pool full of piranhas, I expect you will not misgender and deadname me any more."

edit: link fixed

Was this intentionally channeling KulakRevolt, or are we seeing convergent evolution?

More seriously, the US government pay scale isn’t supervillain material. Good luck luring a harem in that percentile.

Perhaps in high-T world Brinston was an aggressive embezzler, but it seems just as likely that they get punched out by a kickass loose-cannon cop.

Where's Brinton in this table?

Not actually sure.

“Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Office of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition” isn’t exactly the cream of the crop. It looks like such offices are actually on the Executive Schedule, and while it’s not listed, I’m guessing level IV.

Still not private-island money. Luggage might just be a side hustle.

Office of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition

Depends what they did and how many years experience, but Glassdoor is telling me median salary is $110,716 in a range $88-140k. Since Brinton has no previous similar experience, I'd expect them to be on the lower end of the scale, e.g. for someone with up to 1 year's experience, the range is $44-71k, median $55,688.

Current vacancies (until/unless Brinton gets the boot) for Deputy Assistant Secretaries:

US Department of Energy

DOE Science, Technology and Policy Program - Office of Asian Affairs Opportunity

Washington, DC

$60K-$91K Per Year (Glassdoor est.)

APDAS for Regulatory and Policy Affairs

Washington, DC

$178K-$204K Per Year (Employer est.)

So indeed probably worth it to steal suitcases containing clothes, jewellery and makeup that all add up to a couple of grand in value, rather than having to buy that themselves!

So indeed probably worth it to steal suitcases containing clothes, jewellery and makeup that all add up to a couple of grand in value, rather than having to buy that themselves!

If your salary is not enough for you, there are so many possible side gigs that do not involve danger of prison.

Especially when you have lots of free time because your job is no work sinecure given to you as political favor - there is no disposal of nuclear waste and never will be.

Remember when Newton was given position of Master of the Mint as reward, and shocked everyone by actually going there and doing the job instead of only collecting his salary as expected.

Sadly, Brinton is no Newton ;-(

All I can think is how sad it is that most everything's so lame and retarded and pointless – the war, the culture war, the zero covid war, the economy, the sacred cows. Even as the machine intelligence aims at superhuman heights, humans seem committed to degenerate to protozoa.

This is not about "humans", this is about Western degeneracy ;-(

Many very colorful, comic book worthy characters among African warlords and Latino druglords, even in our time.

This Brinston guy is the Nuclear Fuel Czar, give or take. In a more high-T world, he could've become a supervillain. He could've created a harem on a secret island. But instead he's... stealing women's luggage in airports?

Hard to be supervillain on the salary of Deputy Assistant Secretary at US Department of Energy (and not many opportunities for grift on this job either).

It appears one big upside to Western degeneracy is an inability to create super villains.

Barely-six-figures seemed like an implausibly low estimate to me, so I dug a bit more; apparently FOIA requests say his offer was $178,063, which sounds more like what I'd expect, even if it's also not nuclear-powered-island-supervillain money.

If this is a second (known) offence, it needn't be a fetish, it could be kleptomania (or whatever they're calling it nowadays, do I look like I have the latest DSM to hand?)

Disruptive, impulse-control and conduct disorders. These disorders include problems with emotional and behavioral self-control, such as kleptomania or intermittent explosive disorder.

I am confused. How does the issuance of a warrant establish that Brinton stole the bag due to a "continually escalating fetish"? Can you elaborate?

ETA:

Let me propose an alternate theory: Brinton liked the way the bags looked and stole them because they wanted to use the bags themselves. Note how this squares with the fact that Brinton was seen at another airport using the first bag they stole. If Brinton only cared about the contents of the bag and not the bag itself, why keep the bag and use it at another airport?

I agree. People are jumping to conclusions. I have no doubt that Brinton is a thief, but the reasons why he is a thief are unclear at this time. Maybe he has a fetish for stealing women's clothes, as people have suggested. Maybe he wanted the bags to use them. Maybe he wanted the clothes for normal, non-fetish purposes. Maybe he's just a kleptomaniac and steals things compulsively.

The fetish explanation is certainly one possible explanation, but it's not the only one. It isn't even the most likely one, imo. Asserting that we know why this man is stealing bags is premature at this time.

There’s no rational reason to be targeting women for their bags specifically. He could easily just grab them from a luggage store. Your really bending over backwards to give this person the benefit of the doubt - why?

Or if he wants used women’s clothing, specifically, he can just buy it. Either from fetish sites or from thrift stores.

Why are you bending over backwards to insist that a person you know very little about has some kind of fetish involving luggage or other people's clothing?

I’m not - using base rates alone this seems obviously tied to some kind of paraphilia. I’m using statistics and probability which admittedly doesn’t come intuitively to most people

Base rates of what? Is there some data suggesting that people who steal luggage are fetishists? Not saying there isn't, but I'm interested to see the statistics themselves.

Stealing womens clothes can be done for profit or for sexual satisfaction. That the clothes in question were used, lowers their resale value thus increasing the probability that the latter case is true.

But there are obvious, rational reasons to target women for their bags. Women tend to be weaker and less likely to start a confrontation than men, for starters. Targeting a woman means you're less likely to get beaten up (by the victim, at least).

Maybe if you’re literally purse snatching but taking luggage from airport carousels is the most covert way to do this. And again you can shop lift with impunity in most urban American cities so this makes less sense as an explanation

Nobody's saying stealing purses is a good thing, just that it might not be a fetish. There's doubt about "whether the theft is motivated by sexual deviancy" (although they are a 'sexual deviant' just by common-sense meaning anyway - drag queen, kink, etc), but not doubt about "whether they stole the bags and that is dumb".

  1. Two thefts is not enough to show a definite pattern. Randomly grabbing bags and getting women's bags is going to happen 1/4 of the time (or thereabouts, because it's unlikely the bags are evenly split between men and women).

  2. Nobody says there was necessarily a rational reason for this theft. If he's a kleptomaniac, that's certainly not rational.

  3. I'm not in the least "bending over backwards to give him the benefit of the doubt". I'm simply not willing to jump to conclusions like others are as to his motives for theft.

Two thefts is not enough to show a definite pattern.

Sure it is. Baggage isn’t gender neutral - you can tell from name tags and often aesthetics which gender it belonged to.

Kleptomania is pretty much unheard of among men, which he is. It’s a female gendered disorder so again the paraphilia explanation fits the statistical profile. It’s just base rates people!

The fact that this isn't the first time that he stole luggage. If he's stealing luggage at least twice, then there's something more going on.

I believe the escalating fetish explanation, because it explains his actions, which otherwise don't make much sense. This article doesn't mention the sex of the LV victim, but I'd bet on female, and you'd need long odds to get me to bet male.

Probably kleptomania

If Brinton wanted the clothes and didn't care about the bags, why keep and re-use the stolen bag?

Perpetuate the thrill for a time, falsely believe this would give plausible deniability, basic convenience.

I think we're past the point of presuming rational explanations.

It isn’t the issuance of the warrant. It is how this dude has apparently done it twice.

That suggests he is either a general kleptomaniac or was targeting the luggage for specific reasons. The woman’s clothing seems the most likely explanation if he was targeting the luggage.

Doesn’t prove anything but increases the probability of the woman’s clothing theory.

How did Brinton know the luggage contained women's clothing?

I don’t know if he did (hence why I said it increases the odds but isn’t dispositive). I also don’t know what the luggage looked like, but some luggage codes pretty obviously female.

For the first case, allegedly seen on CCTV taking the tag off the bag and putting it into their own handbag. So even if the case didn't look identifiably 'a woman's case', the name on the tag might have clued them in.

I don't think they need to steal random suitcases to get their hands on women's clothing, but then again if it is a fetish, then simply going out and buying their own underwear may not be the thrill they need. But we don't know what the reason is for this behaviour, so speculation that it's a specifically sexual fetish is not supported (as yet) by any evidence one way or the other.

I was wondering if Brinton had any other charges about stealing, and this looks like it. So they do have a problem with impulse-control disorder, but I better shut up now because any further comments are going to veer into criticising Brinton for how they look and dress etc. which is not appropriate for this discussion. Just because I think somebody with a head shaped like that should not wear red lipstick is not pertinent to "Is this person a security risk due to apparently being unable to keep their hands off other people's property?"

I don't wear lipstick because I hate the sensation of it on my mouth, but bright red lipstick is considered "sexy" and does draw attention to your mouth. So if you have a wide mouth, for example, then it will be a lot more prominent. All below is my own personal aesthetics, so don't take it as gospel.

Brinton has a potato head (apologies to the person but that is their head and face shape). This picture shows how the bright red mouth makes their entire face/head look unbalanced (the shaven/bald head means a lot of empty space). So down-playing their features is the best way to go, not emphasising them. I don't know what they were like when they had hair, but their beard is ginger, so yeah: red hair and bright red lipstick is a bad combo. "Ordinary and conventional as possible" is the way to go here. Or else have a full face of make-up, because they have narrow/small eyes so they need to use something to 'open' their eyes up. Their nose is also snub (to be kind), i.e. short and broad.

But as I said, this is my own opinion only. The bald head doesn't help because it creates more territory for their facial features and so gives them a more oblong shape. All kinds of guides online as to how to apply makeup for your face shape, like this one.

I ask because I never understood women's affectuation with lipstick. In almost all cases, it makes them uglier.

I asked some time ago - and got reply that many woman use lipstick and I am not noticing it.

So out of all cases where you noticed lipstick it seems to be making them uglier.

You can be wrong about them looking better without it.

You may be correct that for you they would look less ugly, but this does not apply to others.

You may not notice other lipstick use.

red

Sorry, I failed reading.

Many of the brand's bags look recognizably feminine and I wouldn't flinch at a bet that Brinton knows more about feminine brands than the median male.

Alternate simpler theory: Brinton thought the bags looked nice and wanted to own them. This also comports with how Brinton re-used the first bag they stole at another airport.

That could be true!

My point above is it raises the odds he is a kleptomaniac or a fetishist as a second incident reduces the odds it was a mistake

I do not think I ever claimed it was a mistake?

My suspicion is also because every story he tells deflects the issue of the contents.

Brinton later admitted to taking the wrong bag, but said that he didn’t have the clothes and other contents that the woman said were in the suitcase.

“That was my clothes when I opened the bag,” the Energy Department official said, according to the complaint.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/11/29/6-points-on-felony-theft-case-against-biden-administrations-gender-fluid-energy-official

He never checked a bag but, when he "accidentally" picks up the bag he finds his clothes in it? This is the lie he started with BTW (well..it was the second lie, the first is that he took nothing). It's not an SBF thing where he degenerated to this level. It was clearly on his mind that he REALLY needed to deflect the issue of the clothes and, in a panic, he told an absurd lie.

Then he left it in the hotel...but no one in the hotel found anything.

“That was my clothes when I opened the bag,” the Energy Department official said, according to the complaint.

Possession is nine-tenths of the law?

This is a bad theory. He's paid a decent enough salary and the bags aren't super expensive. Stealing them like this is a terrible risk reward for him. I can see someone making that mistake once, thinking they'd never get caught. But doing it again after being questioned, that feels like he's got a stronger motive. It doesn't have to sexual, he could just love the thrill of stealing

Why doesn't this also invalidate the women's clothes theory? Brinton's salary is decent enough to buy the bags... but not the random women's clothes they contained?

The story was never that he was stealing women's clothes because he didn't have any other way to obtain them. The fact that they were stolen, and thus had previously been owned by an actual women would presumably be part of the fetish. And I'm not endorsing that theory just yet, generic thrill seeking/kleptomania is also possible.

Because wanting something for its aesthetics is not the same as wanting something for the thrill of stealing it/knowing it belonged to someone else, where the transgression is a part of the appeal.

I could ask the same question: why would any of the men we know for sure stole underwear not just buy it? Why would any Peeping Tom not watch porn?

More comments

Stealing a woman's clothes is more of a thrill than buying new clothes, if you're into that sort of thing. It's like asking why somebody would pay $30 for an e-girl's bath water when they have free water in their house.

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The way this game works is if a more pedestrian theory can be proposed -- even if it doesn't fit the facts -- it is automatically more credible than any outrageous one.

Simpler theories should recieve higher priors but that isn't an infinitely strong effect. In this case I find the idea of a well paid government worker repeatedly stealing luggage just because he's too cheap to buy it to be less likely than a fetish or other psychological disorder

We had a post a short while ago laying out the story as well as a link from a person who claims to studies deviant men about how certain people with fetishes need new stimulation and so escalate to get a rush. And stealing women's clothing (especially underwear) is a stereotypical example

Well, when Sam Brinton was caught he gave all sorts of bizarre answers. First he just lied and said it was his bag (despite not checking in any luggage and being seen tearing off the label), then he said he opened it and found his stuff in it..somehow. Then he said he simply took out the contents and left them in the hotel. Except the hotel said no clothing was left...All of these explanations conveniently point away from him getting the contents- except none of them can be verified or have been debunked.

At the time there were iirc good reasons to question the doctor's very strong conclusions and some people wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume some kind of accident (despite his absurd lies).

Well, once might be the worst coincidence combined with being the dumbest person in the world (his lies were "a dog ate the chocolate homework" level) . Twice is another thing altogether.

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