site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   11407 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 15, 2025

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor and Nuclear Physicist, Nuno Loureiro, was shot to death last night in his own home. Loureiro was reportedly Jewish and somewhat vocally pro-Israel. No suspect is in custody. I cannot help but think that this might be related to the shooting at Brown University last week. My knowledge of the geography of the northeast United States is limited, but I believe the two locations are at most a couple of hours apart. The shooting at Brown seems to have targeted the class of a professor of Israel-US relations.

I think we are are now approaching five left wing domestic terrorist attacks in as many months. When I suggested we were on the verge of slipping into another Days of Rage after the Israeli embassy attack, everyone here pooh-poohed the idea. But my concerns have only deepened since.

No one considering Iran for this? They would have motive for the assassination of a Jewish (or simply American) nuclear scientist.

No one considering Iran for this?

Because that's a red line and everyone in the chain of command for that hit all the way to the Ayatollah dies. Yes, it's unfair that the US gets to play big dick foreign policy while other countries can't, but that's the way it is.

It’s a good thing I didn’t write that post about RADICAL SUNNI TERRORISM and how American geopolitical interests prey on the ignorance of the general population to smear Shi’ites and Iran by proxy.

All right, I'll bite on that bait. You rogue.

He was not that kind of nuclear scientist: magnetic reconnection in plasmas is pretty far from strategic military relevance.

"Close enough for government work"? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Just kidding. I don't have a clue what happened.

Jerusalem Post says Israel is investigating that particular angle. But it doesn’t say if they’ve found anything specific.

Because the shooting took place in his home, let's hold off on speculation just yet. It could be a domestic dispute or the likes, rather than a politically motivated one. And by the name, I would have assumed the man was Italian. He was Portuguese, and while certainly you can be Portuguese and Jewish, we don't know if he was for sure; Wikipedia says nothing about that and so where are you getting "reportedly" from?

It seems like some interested parties are claiming he was Jewish and hence that was why he was shot, but we simply don't know enough yet about what happened. This is reminding me of the list of transgender homicides, where "hit by a car and died in traffic accident" was counted as a homicide.

Because the shooting took place in his home, let's hold off on speculation just yet. It could be a domestic dispute or the likes, rather than a politically motivated one

Yeah, I think that's the default assumption. Just a wild-ass guess, but based on the fact that he's slender, decent-looking, and very stylish for a physicist, I'll go with "jealous ex-boyfriend"

Who knows? He could have been a hound with the co-eds or female faculty/staff members, and this is a jealous boyfriend/husband going after the prof sleeping with his girlfriend/wife. It could be a disgruntled neighbour over putting out the bins on the wrong day. A lot of possibilities, jumping straight to "he was Jewish! (even though on his official bios there's no mention of race or religion) and he was murdered because anti-Semitism!" is definitely leaping to conclusions.

He could have been a hound with the co-eds or female faculty/staff members, and this is a jealous boyfriend/husband going after the prof sleeping with his girlfriend/wife.

Agreed, that's another possibility worth considering.

and he was murdered because anti-Semitism!" is definitely leaping to conclusions.

I agree, although I think you are attacking a bit of a strawman here.

Here's what the poster apparently said:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor and Nuclear Physicist, Nuno Loureiro, was shot to death last night in his own home. Loureiro was reportedly Jewish and somewhat vocally pro-Israel. No suspect is in custody. I cannot help but think that this might be related to the shooting at Brown University last week. My knowledge of the geography of the northeast United States is limited, but I believe the two locations are at most a couple of hours apart. The shooting at Brown seems to have targeted the class of a professor of Israel-US relations.

I think we are are now approaching five left wing domestic terrorist attacks in as many months. When I suggested we were on the verge of slipping into another Days of Rage after the Israeli embassy attack, everyone here pooh-poohed the idea. But my concerns have only deepened since.

Also, in fairness, there is a lot of alarm in the Jewish/Zionist community over the recent attacks in Australia. The fact is that much of the world has been whipped up into an anti-Jewish frenzy as of late.

Information about his personal life is slowly trickling out. One source says "Loureiro was reportedly born in Portugal to a Sephardic Jewish family in 1977" so that covers the Jewish ancestry part. Other reports say he was married with three children.

So probably not an affair gone wrong, but it could still be anything. Police say no suspect yet, which is unusual, but I guess we'll have to wait until they can find some evidence and release it.

  • Girl at MIT exists
  • Student at MIT has girlfriend
  • Prof cheats with girl student on MIT boy despite having 3 kids and a wife
  • MIT boy with bright future decides to kill professor
  • MIT boy acquires gun and kills professor in home (from reports, wife was in the house)
  • Whole thing stays secret in dorm
  • Involved female keeps silence

Sounds unlikely.

Current guess:

  • Family being at home makes break-in unlikely.
  • Inside the building removes freak accident unlikely.
  • Targeted killing most likely.

Whatever we're slipping into will definitely be worse than the Days of Rage. The great majority of leftist terrorist acts in that period were nonlethal and symbolic bombings and abductions; this will definitely not be the case this time. Also the Days of Rage took place in a country that was much more homogenous ethnically and religiously, where civic nationalism was a much bigger social factor than today.

Also the Days of Rage took place in a country that was much more homogenous ethnically and religiously

Not really; they took place before the great deracination of "white ethnics" - to say someone was Polish, or Irish, or Italian, etc. really meant something then. Additionally the 70's Days of Rage took place before the replacement of religion by politics as the self-described centerpiece of people's lives.

Why wouldn’t they still be symbolic and non lethal? What’s changed on that front?

We don’t even have a draft anymore. That alone must have reduced the average American’s comfort with violence.

Why wouldn’t they still be symbolic and non lethal? What’s changed on that front?

Ongoing political radicalization in echo chambers, I suppose?

I'm guess I'm not convinced that those are actually better at creating psychos. The 60s and 70s were fertile ground for New Age religions, sex cults, exotic drugs, serial killers, and Godless communists.

My assessment of the current internet is that it probably has a far more significant population take-up of New Age religions, sex cults, exotic drugs, serial killers, and Godless communists than the 60s and 70s did. I'm not highly confident about the math, but it looks to me like what would be maybe a few dozen-thousand people in a handful of geographic hotspots is now multiple millions of people spread through every layer of society, fully normalized and monetized. See the seminal "toaster fuckers" meme for a straightforward description of the mechanism, then observe that the Trans movement we're now perhaps seeing the tail end of would not have been wildly out of place in the 60s or 70s, but there it would have been grassroots and confined to a neighborhood or two in each of a few major cities, and the current iteration has been nation-wide and received overwhelming support from most institutions of note.

I do not think our current era is winning the less-crazy game.

I almost mentioned the toaster thing, yeah.

See, I think you can have culture/technology/whatever that breeds more bizarre views without effectively cultivating homicidal ones. There is reason to believe that Internet activism is significantly less effective at mobilizing actual people. It certainly doesn't get them into bars and malls and third spaces. You could imagine cultural phenomena that are eye-wateringly, post-ironically strange without actually hurting and killing people.

Actually, we don't really have to imagine, do we? That's the Satanic Panic. It's thinkpieces about video games encouraging violence or licentiousness or misogyny. You can't suggest a damn thing without someone countersignaling it and getting backlash in turn.

We may or may not have some fundamental disagreements on trans politics, but that makes for a pretty illustrative example. Has the overwhelming aesthetic weirdness actually translated to violence? Does holding specific views on gender presentation actually make people more likely to bomb government buildings? Are trans men wildly overrepresented at riots?

(I legitimately don't know the answer to this. Testosterone is a hell of a drug.)

Speech is not inherently violent. Aesthetics are not inherently violent. The outrageous weirdness of modern culture has not yet given rise to 70s levels of violence. It's quite possible that they never will.

Speech is not inherently violent. Aesthetics are not inherently violent. The outrageous weirdness of modern culture has not yet given rise to 70s levels of violence. It's quite possible that they never will.

A good summary of my long-term participation here would be that I'm deeply skeptical that the assertion you lay out here fundamentally is or will remain true, but arguing it would require more space than is available in the present margin. Suffice to say, I think I have a good grasp of your argument here, and though I am very worried it is wrong, I can readily recognize that there's an abundance of persuasive evidence on your side.

To sketch out an initial sally, though, consider how you're approaching the concept of "violence" here. I assume you're referring to something like US homicide rate by year. I think the way most people look at that graph is that you have "US Society", and in the 1960s something goes wrong with "US Society" and a real murder problem develops, and then in the 90s "US Society" finally gets a handle on things and the problem largely resolves itself. So we look at the present situation, and we compare it to the 60s and 70s, and we say "by objective measures, this problem is not nearly as bad as what we had before, and what we had before was itself survivable, so we're probably going to be okay."

As I see it, a more accurate description would be that something went wrong with "US Society" in the 1960s, and a real murder problem develops... and over the next thirty years, that problem and the root causes giving rise to it pretty thoroughly destroy the previously existing "US Society" and replace it with a very different social order. The accumulated radical changes are eventually sufficient to get the problem being measured back down to a manageable level, but the old society is fundamentally and permanently changed in the process.

In the 1970s, we had tens of thousands of bombings in a world where dynamite and nitrogen fertilizer were available in hardware stores on a cash-and-carry basis. That world no longer exists.

In the 1970s, we had lots and lots of murders in a world with 1970s trauma medicine. Our current murder rate is not backstopped by 1970s trauma medicine.

In the 1970s, we had violent crime waves policed by cops filling out paper forms and relying on eyewitnesses. Now we have an automated surveillance state that would have given the East Germans wet dreams.

In the 1970s, we had a highly-cohesive and values-homogenous culture. Now we are polarized and atomized to an almost incomprehensible degree, and signs of broad-based values incoherence are rampant.

The question is, how should we frame current data? Is it the raw murder rate, or is it the murder rate versus the energy expended to suppress murder? The latter, it seems to me, gives a more sobering view.

Firearms culture, militarized policing, mass incarceration, pervasive surveillance, and radically advanced trauma medicine are among the bigger cards we played to get things back in line the last time social trends got going in the wrong direction. If they get going in the wrong direction now, we don't get to replay these cards; whatever we see is the trend with these adaptions already taken into account. I'm skeptical that many cards that big remain in our hand, and were such cards available, whether we would recognize a continuous "US Society" on the other side of playing them.

More generally, I'm not sure what is meant by speech and aesthetics not being "inherently violent". I observe a strong correlation between harshness of words and harshness of actions. Not a perfect correlation, certainly, but a much, much stronger one than we might infer from "...but words will never hurt me." Words have often gotten people killed. Words have often coordinated violence at every scale from the interpersonal to continent-spanning war. It does not seem to me that a clean demarcation exists where the words "those people are the problem, we should kill them" are totally fine, and it's only the mob actually coming together and killing those people that's the problem.

I don’t think so. One of the features of days of rage style terror (also the basque, ira, raf etc) campaigns in the 1970s, and with anarchist / leftist violence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was that people actually regularly got away with attacks in a way that they don’t today. Surveillance is much higher, all these discords are being AI monitored, cars can be easily tracked, mountains of cell phone and transaction data can be filtered with analysis performed with minimal human involvement. In 1977, before ubiquitous CCTV, before ANPR, before everyone carrying around a tracking device, before DNA analysis that means that if they find anything you possibly touched they can pull your second cousin on 23-and-me and find you etc, it was much harder to find terrorists without a confession, a mole, or a fuck-up.

The islamists get around this because they’re one and done, radicalized online, mostly lone or duo/trio attacks, and because most importantly they want to and expect to die and go to Jannah. An islamist who stabs people outside a synagogue doesn’t expect to go on doing this until victory; he will view the defeat of the yahud and crusaders only from heaven. Leftists want to build their utopia on earth and actually want to live in it.

A couple of things.

  1. Plenty of IRA fighters were being arrested, imprisoned, or killed during shootouts with the army and the police. To the point that most of the IRA outside of South Armagh had to reform into a less effective cell structure and pretty drastically limit the scale of their attacks.
  2. If things ever got as bad as Northern Ireland during the Troubles, all the neat technological stuff becomes much less effective. Part of why these guys usually get caught is that there are very few of them and the government can dedicate massive resources to each case. If America was having several attacks per week, no-go zones in multiple cities that the police can’t even go into without support from the army, a subset of which even the army has trouble getting into, and a hostile or fearful populace that isn’t going to assist investigations without being forced, Palantir widgets and drones aren’t going to be nearly as useful.

people actually regularly got away with attacks in a way that they don’t today.

How are the "mostly peaceful" protestors doing these days? Perhaps more important: What's the perception of how they are doing these days?

A few early arrests might get people to change their tune, but that would require:

  • the first few attacks happening regardless
  • the government actually trying to fight against politically-active criminals on the left, and
  • them succeeding, and
  • that knowledge spreading

It might fizzle out, but I'm not as optimistic that it's simply dead in the water right now.

I’d say there’s a categorical difference between protests, even ones that turn into riots, and bombings.

There have definitely been prison sentences in the Minneapolis and Seattle arsons. Same for protest-adjacent murders. Even statue vandals have gotten convicted. Were there particular cases you had in mind?

I’d say there’s a categorical difference between protests, even ones that turn into riots, and bombings.

I can definitely see that lone-wolf vs. crowd-based violence is different, but they blend together enough to be judged in the same breath.

One particular person chose to throw a Molotov cocktail. The fact that he was within a supportive crowd at the time may have helped him make that choice, but I don't think it caused the desire to appear from nothing. Similarly, the "crowd" couldn't offer concrete support from home, but they could still offer moral support and encouragement.

Were there particular cases you had in mind?

No, explicitly not. This is a 100% psychological/sociological question because that's what drives people to act. If the vibes say you can get away with murder, then people will act like they can get away with murder, and (occasionally) commit murder. The ground truth of conviction rates only matters as far as it changes the perception (and prevents second offenses, I guess). Preemptive arrests are similar.

How much do you think those vibes influence an honest-to-God terrorist?

They have about as much connection to the actual risk:benefit calculation as tea leaves do.

How much do you think those vibes influence an honest-to-God terrorist?

Quite a bit. If someone who's disaffected by The SystemTM comes to believe that murder is a good path forward, then they might just do it.

Celebrating political violence and not punishing it is the easiest way to make it more attractive.

They have about as much connection to the actual risk:benefit calculation as tea leaves do.

Broadly correct. What do you think the connection between the actual risk:benefit calculation and the decision to go terrorist is?

Pretty strong, at least for political terror. Think about the selection effects in making it to the "planting a bomb" stage. The absolute dumbest or most impulsive are likely to get filtered out, one way or another.

I'm not saying they're making a reasonable calculation. Sometimes there's a big thumb on the scale saying "you'll totally go to heaven for this" or "there's no risk since you're smarter than all those people who got caught." But they are demonstrating a basic ability to think about actions and consequences.

The current vibes aren't nearly enough to tip that scale. I get that you feel like BLM protestors and Gaza enthusiasts are getting away with murder. I don't think your confidence is shared by the mainstream left, let alone any radicals. They're terrified that Trump is going to black-bag them in the middle of the night!

More comments

The left wing attacks that we’ve seen recently, using a broad definition (the Kirk and United Healthcare assassinations for example) have been mostly lone wolf attacks

The ICE attacks have been groups, and they're awfully close to outnumbering those lone-shooter attacks.

Right, but (thanks to Democratic control of mainsteam media) to most of the country those aren't even attacks; they're legitimate protests against a rogue organization.

No "but" there, that's in line with my point: Violent political attacks on the Left are an attractive option (literally: the option attracts people). If you can do a bit of doublespeak to hide what it is, then that's even better.

So your argument is that violent leftist groups are sufficiently deterred?

Not necessarily, my argument is that a given radical leftist is probably less likely to pursue violence today than in the 1970s, for the reasons I outlined.

Some details:

He was killed at 9 Gibbs street, Brookline. I lived within walking distance of this neighborhood. It's exceedingly safe. There are no murders in Brookline. In fact, there was 1 homicide in Brookline in the last 20 years (2006 - Dec 2025), and that was a drug deal gone wrong.

He was killed in the Foyer of his apartment building. Burglars generally prefer single family homes, and and there are many in this neighborhood. Already sus. Next, if it was a break-in, his body would have been inside the house. Why would someone come all the way up to his foyer (inside the building), and then kill him outside the apartment ? Does not sound like a professional criminal.

Pro-Israel, Hanukah and Brown University timing only makes it worse.

He was killed in the Foyer of his apartment building. Burglars generally prefer single family homes, and and there are many in this neighborhood. Already sus. Next, if it was a break-in, his body would have been inside the house. Why would someone come all the way up to his foyer (inside the building), and then kill him outside the apartment ?

I'm not a hit man or thug, but to me it seems like a decent place to assassinate someone or otherwise attack them. In the foyer of a multi-unit building, you can be alone with someone without them necessarily getting suspicious or alarmed. And typically the person has to pause to unlock the inner door, leaving them both stationary and distracted.

The only problem is that most multi-unit buildings require a key, and guests have to be buzzed in. They're also likely to be under video surveillance.

The only problem is that most multi-unit buildings require a key, and guests have to be buzzed in. They're also likely to be under video surveillance.

A very common setup in places like Boston is that there will be an outer door (which is always unlocked) which leads to an entry area with an inner door which is locked. You need to be buzzed in (or have a key) to get through the inner door, but anyone can walk into the entry area. The article I had read (which admittedly I did not read very carefully) seemed to imply that he was killed in that area.

I can't say I've ever seen a situation where that would pose an an actual barrier. People are always propping doors or letting someone through at the same time as them.

My own experience as a missionary who did door to door tracting in apartment buildings: just start ringing random apartments and you'll find someone who will buzz you in without even talking to you

Wildly speculating here, but if he knew/recognised the person (who had waited for him to show up) then he might bring them into the foyer with him.

But this is all armchair detective theorising at present,.

most multi-unit buildings require a key, and guests have to be buzzed in.

Is that an actual barrier, or a polite fiction? I've definitely seen people follow others into apartment buildings, or enter as people are leaving, or bypass the lock in other ways. I don't think it's a substantial barrier on the scale of an assassination.

Depends on the building. If it's a large building with a transient population, you can walk in behind someone and act like you live there and they won't question it. But it looks like this was a small building, and if a professor lives there there's a greater chance that it's the kind of place people stay a while. From the pictures it looks like there are maybe four apartments per entrance. In a building like this, it's probable that everyone knows their neighbors, which makes surrepetitiously entering much more difficult.

Indeed, particularly in the age of DoorDash and Amazon, there are always delivery people coming in and out at all hours. It’s completely trivial to tailgate into the building behind one of them.

Everyone is out over their skis on the Jewish professor. You shared no evidence that it was a political murder, and not personal or a robbery of some sort, and I haven’t seen any elsewhere yet. Happy to be proven wrong, but let’s hold ourselves to higher standards here.

Everyone is out over their skis on the Jewish professor. You shared no evidence that it was a political murder, and not personal or a robbery of some sort, and I haven’t seen any elsewhere yet. Happy to be proven wrong, but let’s hold ourselves to higher standards here.

Yeah, I think that if there is a murder of someone who is (1) middle class or above; and (2) not a celebrity, the default assumption should be that it's a family member. I realize that this assumption caused me to be wrong when that United Healthcare CEO was shot and killed, but still. If I had to bet money at this point, I would guess that it's a current or former romantic partner that was behind this.

They might not have been celebrities but were nevertheless fairly well-known, at least in certain social circles.

They might not have been celebrities but were nevertheless fairly well-known, at least in certain social circles.

In my opinion, the relationship between (1) level of celebrity; and (2) attractiveness as a target to random killers entails a pretty dramatic drop-off. For example, Rob Reiner is pretty well known but I would have been pretty surprised if his killer had turned out to be an obsessed fan, a right-wing radical, or someone who was otherwise outside of his immediate circles.

Obviously I'm not any kind of criminologist, but just as attention seems to follow a power law type distribution, it logically follows that likelihood of being targeted follows a similar distribution.

I think you're probably right here about actual attacks here, but I suspect the threats start appearing at much smaller levels of celebrity. I have noticed that lots of small-ish YouTube creators have subtly started upping their opsec game as their channels have grown. I'm not trying to stalk anyone, but if you're watching, a public "I moved houses" followed by no longer showing the exterior is a fairly common arc (one runner I follow concurrently started driving to different places to start even short runs that previously left from home). Maybe some are just as paranoid as I am, but I'd bet it doesn't take much Internet fame on average for the crazies to start DMing you (or your own thread on KF).

I think you're probably right here about actual attacks here, but I suspect the threats start appearing at much smaller levels of celebrity.

Well the question is what the rate of increase of the danger level is compared to the level of celebrity. I would guess that you have to reach Mr. Beast levels of fame before danger from strangers outweighs danger from people you already know.

You’re lucky I didn’t post my 40 page schizo ramble about Rob Reiner’s death. But anyway, If you sit around and wait for “respectable media outlets” to tell your what’s going on, you’ll never get anywhere.

I agree but “A Jewish professor was murdered” is not sufficient to conclude anything. To make schizo conspiracy theories you at least need some details to work with.

palpatine_do_it.mp4

It’s indeed been a busy week when I forgot to mention this one in that other comment in this thread.

  1. His and his wife’s throats being cut does not seem consistent with the type of crime it allegedly is. Half-out-of-their-minds meth junkies committing a family annihilation crime of passion during a domestic disturbance aren’t usually that precise. 70 stab wounds a piece I would buy, but not throat-cutting.
  2. The police and the media (People magazine specifically) announced that the son did it way too fast. People Magazine would be gambling with a libel lawsuit in any other circumstance. I have never seen the suspect of a murder announced that fast, especially not for a case involving a celebrity.
  3. The fact that the daughter’s first instinct was to call a neighbor (Billy Crystal), rather than the police. The fact that the daughter immediately told the police that her brother probably did it, White House Farm style.
  4. Trump’s weird and kind of disturbing post about the murders.

It seems fishy to me.

Trump's post was weird but I think he put it out as "crazy left-wingers driven nuts by TDS running amok and murdering people" and no more than that. He's as subtle as a brick, so it was taken as victim-blaming.

My immediate reaction to the news was "sounds like family member did it" because there have been a few recent cases in Ireland of people murdered by their (drug-addict/mentally ill) adult kids in these same circumstances.

A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!

Helps to have the post in front you. Also... man, I don't know how to say this, but having family in literally the exact same position as Rob Reiner, it's hard to describe the causal link unless you've seen it. In fact, seeing this headline deeply upset my wife, it parallels so closely with the situation my in-laws perpetually put themselves in with their own mentally ill, drug addicted, violent felon of a son.

Now you might ask, fairly, "What does this have to do with TDS?" And it's a tough explainer, except to say, their TDS is so enmeshed in every decision of their entire lives, and it sucks up so much of their mental space, that somehow they've developed a blind spot to this family member who is obviously going to murder them that they allow to live with them. There are no problems in the world that they can perceive unless they reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. No matter how many people tell them "Hey, your son is going to murder you", no matter how many police wellness checks their neighbors call in on them because their son is in the backyard acting like he might murder someone, no matter how many people refuse to go to their house anymore because they are living with someone who constantly talks about murdering people in a manic state, etc, etc.

And just like Rob Reiner, when my wife's parents are murdered in their home, without knowing anything else about the situation, everyone who's ever known them will know exactly who to point to, it was so obvious to everyone except them.

How could he have meant it as "crazy left-wingers driven nuts by TDS running amok and murdering people"? It's the victim who Trump is saying was driven nuts by TDS, not the killer.

Trying to recreate Trump's train of thought is taking crazy pills, but in the spirit of maximum charity, it could be "actions have consequences, the kind of TDS this person engaged in came back to haunt him as another guy went nuts due to the rubbish being peddled about me and murdered him".

Trump’s weird and kind of disturbing post about the murders.

That's totally in character. Remember "I like the people who did not get captured" regarding McCain being a POW in Vietnam? He doesn't have a filter.

I think he totally has a filter. If he had made equivalent comments about the Christian Right, he would not have become president. Instead, he is selectively applying his filter based on his IFF system. People and groups who are helpful to the MAGA cause do not get his broadsides, but those who are not get whatever he can come up with in his rants.

No, he went after the family of a soldier killed in Iraq too.

They were muslim democrat supporters.

In fairness, is he wrong re capture? Reminded of The point of war isn’t to die for your country but to make that other poor son of a bitch die for his country.

McCain's plane was shot down over hostile territory while Trump was safe in US, malingering. I didn't like the guy at all, but come on.

But did the dead soldiers all screw up, or is the shitty thing about being a soldier that you are often put in situations that personal ability or initiative simply cannot get you out of?

No of course not. It’s an overboard statement. But again the basic instinct isn’t wrong (ie you don’t win by being a pow)

His and his wife’s throats being cut does not seem consistent with the type of crime it allegedly is. Half-out-of-their-minds meth junkies committing a family annihilation crime of passion during a domestic disturbance aren’t usually that precise. 70 stab wounds a piece I would buy, but not throat-cutting.

My read of it was that he was arguing with his parents publicly a couple hours ago, then potentially came back and killed them in their sleep (though I'd also expect that to be more gratuitous stabbing than single throat cuts)

The precision does not bother me. Trump’s deranged post is typical for him. I will admit however that People Magazine was shockingly quick, in a way I have never seen before, to blame the son. Do you have any theory that explains these peculiarities?

LAPD Robbery Homicide are notorious fame hounds, probably literally the single most famous police division in America, my understanding is they attract a certain kind of cop (the kind who wants to appear on documentaries and maybe have a lucrative sideline in or second career commenting on the news or writing detective thrillers, which many of them go on to do) who might well call up People and tell them what’s happening in the investigation. That plus the sister probably told them too, which is enough for an editor and legal counsel to make a publishing decision knowing that you have both a police source and the surviving family on board.

Trump’s deranged post is typical for him

Honestly I felt it was one of the biggest crossing of the lines of decorum from him.

Do you think you would have thought this were it not for the reaction to Charlie Kirk criticisers on the left? I think this one is in no worse taste than many other things Trump has said in terms of decorum. However it's a notable and stark political error, coming soon after many MAGA voices have been claiming that it is only the left that acts gleeful about murder.

For me the thing that put this more out of bounds than most of the batshit things Trump says is that he should be able to relate to it. A father being killed by his son is truly tragic, unless the father has covered for grievous crimes the son has committed. It doesn't look like that's the case here, just that Nick Reiner is a complete and utter schizophrenic nut. I don't know that he's terrorized anyone but his parents, and a parent should be able to empathize.

The reason the left's response to Charlie Kirk hit me so hard is that he was assassinated - again, the form of death matters. If he was hit by a car, the left being a bag of dicks would feel normal. When your own side extra-judiciously kills someone, you should not cheer.

When parents are killed by their mentally ill child, it's a true tragedy that you wouldn't wish on anyone.

Also, The Princess Bride is a national treasure.

I mean I agree a lot of people crossed the line on Kirk but essentially nobody in actual leadership and it was more 'being inadequately deferential' than 'actively doing the macarena on his grave' from people with reasonable positions of leadership. Then the POTUS essentially rants with his whole chest a massive diatribe on the victim of inter-family mass murder

More comments

Do you have any theory that explains these peculiarities?

The Jews The Jews The Jews The elites had him killed.

Technically true.

I think you may be confusing me with some other posters and I resent the implication.

Edit: sorry I misunderstood and was a bit snappy here. Consequences of living in a constant state of paranoia.

I was just riffing on the general theme of schizo rambling. No specific implication intended.

More comments

Do you have any theory that explains these peculiarities?

Not at the moment. The timing with the other two recent incident seems odd to me, but I can’t place any kind of connection.

So I'm assuming your theory is basically that whoever organized the hit was aware that their son is a deranged methhead and is thus easy to frame.

Half-out-of-their-minds meth junkies committing a family annihilation crime of passion during a domestic disturbance aren’t usually that precise. 70 stab wounds a piece I would buy, but not throat-cutting.

Only Imperial stormtroopers are so precise.

I find it interesting how things come to be a narrative about a ‘problem’. Journalists love to see a couple of vaguely related events and group them together. I remember how all the MeToo accusations came out at once and it became a thing that everyone was concerned with. I haven’t seen much, if any, attempt to pull together a narrative about the violence this and last year. Despite the reasons for much of this violence being fame, definitional terrorism, and weird alliances to online bedfellows.

I will admit that it’s difficult to directly link all the events over last year or two, but some of it sure seems memetic. Attempted assassination of a presidential candidate, his lackey, a healthcare ceo, to name a few. What’s it gonna take for people to notice?

I will admit that it’s difficult to directly link all the events over last year or two, but some of it sure seems memetic. Attempted assassination of a presidential candidate, his lackey, a healthcare ceo, to name a few. What’s it gonna take for people to notice?

If you're a committed progressive, i.e. most journalists, what's the incentive to notice?

Nuno Loureiro, was shot to death last night in his own home. Loureiro was reportedly Jewish and somewhat vocally pro-Israel.

Although it’s possible he’s maternally Jewish or something, the name sounds Brazilian (or maybe European) Portuguese.

In addition to the Brown shooting this week, there was also the Bondi Beach shooting and the acid attack incident in Georgia where a “man in dark clothing” threw acid upon a woman.

Some have claimed connections between the incidents, such as the Bondi Beach and Brown University shootings. And now, the MIT and Brown shootings, of which a connection I find more plausible. However, I also wouldn’t be surprised if it was just a randomly big news week when it comes to attacks.

He’s definitely from Portugal, but he is allegedly Jewish (according to Laura Loomer). IIRC Laura Loomer can get a bit loopy in theory and interpretation, but her reporting on basic facts is usually pretty good.

The shooting at Brown seems to have targeted the class of a professor of Israel-US relations.

I have to squint really hard to discern any kind of motive for the Brown shooting. The aforementioned professor was not present at the time since it was just a weekend study session led by a TA and not an actual class, and anyone who was specifically targeting her would have known this. Meanwhile, the two fatalities are a Christian student and a Muslim (-sounding) student. (Source: Wikipedia).

The woman killed, and according to some reports, targeted, was the VP of Brown's College Republicans (I suspect targeting, because there have got to be like five college republicans at Brown, and she was a good-looking young woman). Mukhammad Umurzokov, the other student killed, was Uzbek, so Muslim but not a visible minority. In my experience Uzbeks are generally culturally Muslim, but not pious in the Salafi/Deobandi sense we tend to associate with Islam, and tend to have a very strong sense of chivalry/responsibility, which checks out with reports that he was shot trying to shield her. Who knows whether any of these reports are correct yet, though.

(I suspect targeting, because there have got to be like five college republicans at Brown, and she was a good-looking young woman

I would think that a targeting killing of a university student would be unlikely to take place at a TA-led class session. Because it's kinda hit or miss as to whether the student will attend. [edit: no pun intended]

That being said, what's interesting to me about this killing is that the killer apparently walked away, rather than shooting and shooting until someone stops him.

and tend to have a very strong sense of chivalry/responsibility,

It would be interesting to do a study to see which ethnic/religious group's men are most likely to inconvenience themselves and/or accept risk in order to protect an unknown woman. If I had to guess, I would not put Uzbeks anywhere near the top of the list but I'm just speculating.

It would be interesting to do a study to see which ethnic/religious group's men are most likely to inconvenience themselves and/or accept risk in order to protect an unknown woman. If I had to guess, I would not put Uzbeks anywhere near the top of the list but I'm just speculating.

It depends on the context, I think. There's a strong culture of hospitality to the invited stranger, loyalty to traditional obligations, self-sacrifice within the group. I have been to a lot of poor countries, and Uzbekistan (Central Asia in general) stood out instantly in both how safe it felt for its income level, and the lengths people would go to to do right by me as a point of principle, even if it cost them money. I would not put them at the top of the list of people to pull a Daniel Penny, but close to the top of the list of people who would fight for those they consider in their ingroup, for a definition of that wide enough to include casual acquaintances. I'm sure a social psychology study on undergraduate volunteers would definitely capture that, though - "do a study", this is why we had colonial administrators to send back reports on the national characters of strange countries.

an unknown woman

Is a college classmate unknown, though?

Is a college classmate unknown, though?

Good question, I just sort of rolled with the hypothesis that the male student may have died protecting the female student out of a sense of chivalry. If it turns out that the two deceased students had some kind of relationship (romantic or otherwise) it would probably change my assessment of the situation.

In any event, I'm pretty confident that there's a pretty strong correlation between (1) protecting a classmate; and (2) protecting an unknown person who happens to be in the vicinity.

I mean the fact that the shooter killed two people and left militates in favor of targeting, right? The Uzbek exchange student might have been in the way, missed shot, or fighting back on the assumption it was a mass shooting.

I mean the fact that the shooter killed two people and left militates in favor of targeting, right?

Agreed. Although in my opinion the choice of venue and the sheer number of shots fired militates against targeting.

The real question is who would be least likely to.

Stereotypically, Arab Muslims have been quite progressive in their willingness to challenge and dismantle the patriarchal gender norms of male expendability and female protectionism. For example, this joke that’s possibly older than some members of this forum:

Barbara Walters did a story on gender roles in Kuwait several years before the Gulf War. She noted then that women customarily walked about 10 feet behind their husbands. She returned to Kuwait recently and observed that the men now walked several yards behind their wives.


Ms. Walters approached one of the women and said, "This is marvelous. Can you tell the free world just what enabled women here to achieve this reversal of roles?"


"Land mines," said the Kuwaiti woman.

The real question is who would be least likely to.

I'm pretty confident that it would be people from the sort of low-trust cultures where a lot of people feel it's perfectly okay (sometimes even admirable) to mistreat anyone outside of one's extended family. I've had the misfortune of seeing these types of people in action. It's not just that they will cheat you, they will also feel no shame in it and laugh at you for being stupid enough to trust them.

Her name was Ella Cook, just to add.

Yes. RIP.

On a different note I’d argue that this was probably not politically motivated on grounds that people generally comprehend that women, especially young and pretty ones, make very poor targets of publicized political assassinations from a PR perspective.

My read on that is that - if it was in fact an activist, and based off the person of interest's physical profile as a fat schlub who walks funny - we shouldn't necessarily assume some cold-blooded, calculating assassin. Think about spiteful mutant theory, and why Eliot Roger wanted to kill blonde sorority girls.

On a different note I’d argue that this was probably not politically motivated on grounds that people generally comprehend that women, especially young and pretty ones, make very poor targets of publicized political assassinations from a PR perspective.

Anyway, if this was a targeted killing I think it's more likely that it was over romantic/sexual rejection than something political.

‘People generally comprehend’ /= ‘people who kill people comprehend’.

Has there ever been a politically motivated assassination of a young pretty white woman in the US?

Sharon Tate?

I'd argue he was trying to have a political aim even if it was a crazy mirror version of politics.

More comments

Young women are very underrepresented among politically relevant targets and the US doesn’t have a lot of political assassinations, so that doesn’t mean much even if there hasn’t been.

Weren't there like 9 injuries? That's the kind of casualty ratio you get from randomly emptying a handgun clip into a crowd.

In crimethink corners of the interweb there’s been humorous debate as to the racial background of the shooter. The setting might suggest a white, Asian, or hapa shooter, but the kill-to-injured ratio would usually suggest a black shooter, as per Sailer’s Law of Mass Shootings.

This is why I hate race-mixing. It exponentially increases the number of stereotypes.

It's hard to tell right now, but this guy seems to have gone into a building, found a specific room, shot the people inside it, and then left. He probably only had the one gun, he didn't blast away and max out his kill count in the hallways, atrium, etc. That, plus his long wait, seems to me to suggest some kind of targeting - could be political, could be romantic, could be STEMlord snapping during finals, etc., but not the classic kind of nihilistic school shooting. When I wrote that comment, I didn't realize that it was such a large classroom (186 seats), Brown is a small university, but I also have no idea how many people were actually at the study session. We're all speculating in the fog of war for now, and Brown/Rhode Island appear to be trying to hush this as much as possible.

could be STEMlord snapping during finals, etc.,

Could be, but it was also apparently a “Principles of Economics” class—that is, an entry-level sounding economics class, hence the large lecture size. So if it were indeed a STEMlord ragequitting from finals, the ragequitting action was likely not directed toward one (if any) of the courses causing him academic pressure.

Yeah I mostly say that because mass shootings seem to be pretty psychologically comorbid with suicide, and my small-n experience is that STEM guys tend to kill themselves in ways that are more clearly tied to academics, whereas non-STEM kids just kill themselves with drugs or over a breakup. Nobody's snapping and killing people over the pressures of being in Econ 101, but it's also possible there was some psychological motive of targeting the people who the perp thinks have it easy. We shall see (or not).

Mass shooters generally tend to kill themselves, engage the police in order to be killed, or surrender to the police. They don’t usually flee while avoiding security cameras. That’s what makes me think this was probably political.

Mass shooters generally tend to kill themselves, engage the police in order to be killed, or surrender to the police. They don’t usually flee while avoiding security cameras. That’s what makes me think this was probably political.

Yeah, a similar thought occurred to me. My initial thought was that this was a student who snapped, but the fact that he (apparently) stopped shooting and walked away was pretty unusual.

Also, from the fact that he's evaded capture for a couple days it seems pretty likely that he had engaged in some planning and preparation so as to increase his chances of getting away with it.

More comments

My knowledge of the geography of the northeast United States is limited, but I believe the two locations are at most a couple of hours apart.

The guy could have walked from Brown to MIT in the time between the two shootings.

I feel I was a bit flippant in my post on the subject in last week's thread. I didn't consider the possibility that the shooter could still be at large well into the week. We are seeing a new meta emerging in real time. If one has a getaway plan, it's possible to run from the law for several days, perhaps even stringing together multiple attacks in the process.

I didn't consider the possibility that the shooter could still be at large well into the week. We are seeing a new meta emerging in real time. If one has a getaway plan, it's possible to run from the law for several days, perhaps even stringing together multiple attacks in the process.

It would be darkly humorous though, if the Brown shooter ends up getting away with it by walking briskly, but calmly away as if he just let out an office fart, leaving the bewildered to analyze his gait in the escape video like the Patterson Bigfoot footage.

What if the meta for a getaway is not to frantically flee the scene and/or to have an elaborate escape plan, but to just calmly walk away? To borrow from one philosopher:

Hahahahahahahaha How The Fuck Is Getting Caught for a Shooting Real Hahahaha Nigga Just Walk Away From The Scene Like Nigga Put One Foot in Front of the Other Haha

Elliot Rodger looking down at us and punching the air rn.

Elliot Rodger looking down at us and punching the air rn.

Up, surely.

Not really new news, although a real pro would have left the gun behind:

Come on, kid. Don't fool around. Just let your hand drop to your side, and let the gun slip out. Everybody'll still think you got it. They're gonna be staring at your face, Mike, so walk out of the place real fast, but don't run. Don't look nobody directly in the eye, but you don't look away either. Eh, they're gonna be scared stiff of you, believe me, so don't worry about nothing. You know, you gonna turn out all right.

I started to see this with the Brian Thompson shooting last year, where in the immediate aftermath, people online were commenting about how the as-yet-unidentified shooter could escape by taking such-and-such bus route to a particular Canadian airport that has direct flights to the following non-extradition countries, etc.

There was a little of this with the Charlie Kirk shooting also, with the added spectacle of the FBI claiming not once but twice that they caught the guy, only to realize it was the wrong guy, during which time it seemed like the actual shooter could have easily gotten away if he had made any effort to do so.

I do worry that if people start to actually get away with murder in this way then it'll spell the end of what little privacy and civil liberties we still have. ("What are you doing, citizen, trying to ride the bus without your papers?")

Luigi didn't even need to go to Canada - he could have gone straight to LaGuardia and hopped on a plane (well, LGA is quickest with public transit or a cab from the shooting), but he didn't have a network abroad or a place to hide, and being a gringo with little money and a crippling back injury is not a pleasant life in the sort of countries peripheral enough to hide in. If he was healthy and had planned ahead, he could have spent the rest of his life off the grid in some distant surfer town (South America, if you're feeling ballsy, but the really secure move would be to fly Newark-Johannesburg and then get to Madagascar. Great place to disappear forever if you like surfing and don't ever want to go near cell service). I don't see many shooters other than him having the mental stability and executive function to pull that off, though. Tyler Robinson definitely couldn't have.

is he supposed to live the rest of his life off of cash pre-dropped in secure locations in Madagascar? Otherwise he'd get caught as soon as he tried to use an ATM, no?

If he'd put some advance work in with crypto and some basic mixing he'd probably have been fine to get a couple years worth of Madagascar living expenses together and largely untraceable.

You don't need a bank account in rural Madagascar. You won't even find a bank. What you would do is, if you were prepared, go up to Antananarivo occasionally and trade crypto for cash, but realistically you wouldn't need to do that much - a competent white guy can find a way to support himself at a subsistence level, which is all that is really available there. I knew of one surfer hippy who ended up being elected chief of the village he lived in, it's very rare but it happens.

You don't need a bank account in rural Madagascar. You won't even find a bank. What you would do is, if you were prepared, go up to Antananarivo occasionally and trade crypto for cash, but realistically you wouldn't need to do that much - a competent white guy can find a way to support himself at a subsistence level, which is all that is really available there. I knew of one surfer hippy who ended up being elected chief of the village he lived in, it's very rare but it happens.

I doubt that any of this would work if you were wanted for a major crime. A substantial reward would be posted for someone like Luigi Mangione and if he had contact with people in Madagascar someone would almost certainly recognize him.

I think that if the US authorities make your capture a priority, there are only two ways to evade arrest: First, if you are given sanctuary by a country that hates the US and doesn't care about making those relations worse; and second, if you truly go off the grid in the sense of living alone in the woods without any contact with others.

As far as the first goes, it's hit-or-miss and you are always at risk that your host country will decide to use you as a bargaining chip. As far as the second goes, if you are going to choose this route, there's no point in leaving the United States since there is plenty of remote land here and why chance the scrutiny of an international border crossing? In any event, living the rest of your life as a hermit in a cabin in the woods would be pretty miserable for most people. In fact, I think a lot of people would prefer a life sentence in prison.

I'm not sure that if he leaves the country, they find out he did it, at least not for a lot longer than what happened. But yes, you would want the authorities to lose your trail quickly before you get to the next country. The ideal thing for someone like Luigi is probably to have a few political sympathizers ready to pick you up, hide you, and move you. This guy is obviously way lower-profile than Luigi, but the same idea: how would anyone in rural Wales know about the FBI Most Wanted list or the reward for him?

(I think the other reason people don't do this is that it takes a very specific type of personality to truly disappear off the grid like that, and those people generally drop out of society well before killing anybody, it's more pleasant than being a literal woodlands hermit but still not suited to the vast, vast majority of people.)

The ideal thing for someone like Luigi is probably to have a few political sympathizers ready to pick you up, hide you, and move you.

I think that's easier said that done. A huge percentage of people are some combination of lazy, incompetent, and cowardly and would flake / screw things up.

how would anyone in rural Wales know about the FBI Most Wanted list or the reward for him?

Through the internet, I guess. A certain percentage of people have a lot of time on their hands. And a certain percentage of people are very good at recognizing faces. An American who shows up and starts living in a small town in some other country is going to arouse some level of suspicion.

More comments

I wouldn't get too cocky about this being a "new meta" that's available to everyone. The right thought the new meta was to just occupy spaces, violently if need be to get their way because that seemed to work all summer long in 2020. But it turned out that was only allowed because it's what the powers that be wanted all along, and when they tried it the government pulled out every stop to throw them in solitary confinement with a side of struggle cuddles.

Yeah, it sure seems like "people", really Democrats, in Democrat controlled areas, can just murder "people", really conservatives, and just walk away no problem. But I promise you, it is not a generalized strategy. It only seems to work this way because Democrats allow it. And the moment, like January 6, the right attempts to use a strategy of the left, the full force of the police state we all thought was atrophied and neglectful will come down on them like something out of a movie. And suddenly all the people who claimed I wasn't being charitable enough, that Democrats aren't purposely allowing this, will turn on a dime and claim "Duh, what are you stupid?", just like they did after Jan 6th.

It's kinda funny in Australia how many people are currently querying how a South African who attended a Far-Right Rally was deported essentially instantaneously - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-18/nsw-sydney-neo-nazi-protest-matthew-gruter-immigration-visa/106022886 - whilst even before the actual Bondi shooting people have been flagging people carrying ISIS flags and preaching very radical violence-orientated Islam in certain regions of Australia. Yet the police apparatus has been completely powerless.

Even one of the shooters was apparently on a terror watch list and still able to reside in the same property as 6 weapons in a country that'd generally take away your guns for even being accused of DV.

I do think the Brown PD may be withholding info that could be used to help narrow down the suspect list out of misguided anti-Islamophobia, but I know people in the area and it is flooded with police and FBI. I really don’t believe they are just twiddling their thumbs and putting on a show.

We’ll see. Plenty of killers weren’t caught overnight. It’s not so new.

I know people in the area and it is flooded with police and FBI

It's like watching The Simpsons. I halfway expect to see Chief Wiggum in these clips.

An anti-Jewish/anti-Israel shooter could be from either the left or the right these days.

0Hour on Twitter made a decent case to take a longer look at a gay Palestinian student at Brown.

https://xcancel.com/0hour1/status/2000779590478995571#m

This site is still not a link aggregator or a Xitter mirror.

I'm going to register that posts like this have no place on this forum. We're not some gang of true crime wine moms out to ruin the lives of random people.

I identify as a malt liquor True Crime cousin in that, I do, Truly, Crime-it-up to support my drinking problem.

The true crime wine mom phenomenon deserves an effortpost in the Sunday thread. If I make it intact through Christmas and College Football Bowl games, I might take a crack at it. One of the main themes, I think, would be that Married Woman True Crime pathology is an extreme form of the same pattern in trash romance novels; the danger is the attraction. Instead of taming the pirate captain / barbarian / whatever, True Crime Moms "solve" the case and therefore "tame" ... Ed Kemper? Yeah, it doesn't quite track and that's why I call it extreme -- these gals probably get off, to some extent, on the grisly details. This smart lady has a good, long vlog about the extreme world of female oreinted Romantasy - aka, hardcore smut.

But there's another true crime audience we're talking about. It isn't true crime, actually. It's internet real-time sleuths. The earliest big example of this that easily comes to mind was the Boston Marathon bombing. I actually stumbled across the Reddit thread where they were capturing CCTV footage, timestamps, rando schizo tweets (some of which turned out to be accurate). Anyway, these people, to me, are far more dangerous. It's an entire population of turbo-autists who have heard of "confirmation bias" exactly once, right before they discarded it as "not applicable to me because I am so smart." It's the same mode of thinking that leads down the path to "believe all women" and, yet, "trans women are women" (so, then, I guess we're believing every person?)

When these very online folks start to "work the case" for the Brown shooting, or any other event, they create a kind of epistemology-optional universe of ad hoc worldbuilding, but use real people and real data to prop up their shaky scaffolding. This is what makes it so bad. I have no problem with making up fun stories as a hobby or even professional pursuit. But when you're trying to cycle that "information" back into the real world in order to effect real world outcomes you're engaged in an enterprise that is actively hostile to basic civil liberties.

I have no problem with making up fun stories as a hobby or even professional pursuit. But when you're trying to cycle that "information" back into the real world in order to effect real world outcomes you're engaged in an enterprise that is actively hostile to basic civil liberties.

It's interesting that a lot of the problems of information that threaten civil liberties and privacy now, were originally kept public for civil liberty reasons. Property records and arrest records being public prevents people or property from being spirited away under cover of night. But now with the internet, it gets to be too much for everyone to know.

The use of public information to look into crimes used to be helpful when it took work. When you had to go to the courthouse to get access to files. With the internet to spread it, it's all too much.

I go door to door in local elections, and we use software on our phones that filters houses for registered voters, and "supervoters" who vote in every off year primary. I find it creepy that I know all these things before I knock on their door, so I always knock and act as though I'm just knocking on every door, because it would be weird and off putting for me to start by knowing their name and their voting record and their registration.

Kind of like, when it rains, my wife gets vastly more answers than I do. When I'm schlepping around in a big coat, sopping wet, everybody looks out and says what's this fucking creep doing out there? When my wife is wet, people all answer the door, oh you poor sweet beautiful angel are you ok?

some gang of true crime wine moms

Right, we're true crime beer dads.

(Jokes aside, I hate true crime and the whole phenomenon)

Maybe when you don't have many muslims in your country. They move into pole position quickly. Bondi beach, definitely muslims; Brown U, main suspect is muslim. If you get a deadly antisemitic attack in western europe, it's a 90% chance it was muslims. I was just checking incidents to confirm this; and apparently just 2 months ago a syrian -british citizen killed 2 jews in manchester; I didn't even hear about that.

Sure, given that the targets seem to be affiliated with academia, that would suggest left-wing to me. I don’t think a right-wing shooter would have even heard about these people.

An anti-Jewish/anti-Israel shooter could be from...the right these days.

Examples? Most of the anti-Jewish violence I've heard of is Palestinian-aligned, which is a left wing cause. Oldschool antisemitism (like the Nazis) still exists, but it doesn't have nearly the same prominence as the rest.

Chabad of Poway shooting 2019

Last big one was Robert Bowers I think, who attacked a synagogue in Pennsylvania. That was years ago though.

The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting is the most prominent recent example.

Seven years is pushing it for "these days", but I'll have to take it given how rare they are overall.

The main factor here is that it happened before Oct 7th.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats