It feels good to hate, but we also want to be told that we're right.
Is hate really that enjoyable? Is it better than taking a nap?
If school shootings went the way of postal shootings and plane hijackings, and the new thing for disenfranchised bros was to shoot up CEOs, it wouldn't keep me up at night.
2: I've got a gift guide if you're new to trying it out.
This is partially driven, I think, by the fact that almost no one had individually heard of him before he was killed. There weren't any personal facts available about him, he was just a stick-figure of a health insurance company CEO.
CEOs are supposedly using a new security system called Sauron. So they are vulnerable mostly to short people with hairy feet.
5: Plus, he was from Iowa. So it's really hard to humanize him.
5: Is that how it works? I thought real hate required knowing the person.
The power of imagination is the key.
It does feel like some Black Mirror shit .
I had never heard the name Brian Thompson before the shooting, but my company switched to UHC in September and they [expletive] suck.
Is the $10,000 reward a good idea? It seems too low to persuade someone to bring in information that they wouldn't have done otherwise, but enough to make it seem like bringing in information to the police is selling someone out.
It's like "We don't expect you to care, but we only care a little bit ourselves."
11: apparently the average rate of denials is 16%. United is, by far, the worst at 32%. When Tim was looking for a job, I tried to steer him away from employers with United insurance. The salary needed to be at least 10k higher than other offers to make it worth it.
The writing on the bullets is so cinematic. 5% chance it's a diversion?
I'm not actually in favor of assassinations, but if all the stories are about how assassinations are bad instead of why people might want to kill insurance executives, I might change my mind.
10- It feels like gilded age shit. Kevin Kruse on the new other place keeps pointing out that things like NLRB were put in place for employers, not employees, because the alternative to labor agreements isn't always indentured servitude, it's pitchforks and torches at the billionaire's vacation home.
16: I was thinking more of the online reaction part of it.
Now here's the Instamortem™ poll results! Good kill or bad kill?
Do we think he engraved the casing himself? Or like he called up the local gunsmith and was like "how much do you charge to write my revenge fantasies on bullets?"
Why not just use Etsy like everyone else?
I've been pleasantly surprised by the outpouring of vitriol for insurance companies. I'm not saying I'm condoning it per se, but if a health insurance exec gets knocked off every week until we get single payer I'm not gonna put up a fight.
Even the NYTimes commentariat have taken up the pitchforks.
Kinda reminds me of when Shinzo Abe got assassinated for helping the Moonies take money from old people, and everyone was like "yeah, he pretty much had it coming, we should do something about the Moonies."
We could give them shitty health insurance and raw milk.
Somebody with an X account should link to Elon's gorgeous defense of the vital role CEOs play in our society
Oh wow, the OP link led me to this story about our own insurer:
One of the country's largest health insurance companies, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, announced that it would no longer cover anesthesia care during surgery procedures if they pass an arbitrary time limit -- only to partially reverse the policy after an enraged outcry. The change was set to be implemented in Connecticut, New York, Missouri, and possibly Colorado starting early next year. However, the decision has already been overturned in Connecticut, highlighting the sheer unpopularity of the change.
[...] "The American Society of Anesthesiologists calls on Anthem to reverse this proposal immediately," the group wrote in a strongly-worded rebuke, arguing that anesthesiologists provide individualized care, including "resolving unexpected complications that may arise and/or extend the duration of the surgery."
"This is just the latest in a long line of appalling behavior by commercial health insurers looking to drive their profits up at the expense of patients and physicians providing essential care," said ASA president Donald Arnold in a statement. "It's a cynical money grab by Anthem, designed to take advantage of the commitment anesthesiologists make thousands of times each day to provide their patients with expert, complete and safe 'anesthesia care.'"
Also regarding the OP, a bit of extra detail in bold:
The lawsuit alleges that UnitedHealth knew the algorithm had an extremely high error rate and that it denied patients' claims knowing that only a tiny percentage -- 0.2% -- would file appeals to try to overturn the insurer's decision. The complaint alleges the algorithm, dubbed nH Predict, has a 90% error rate, basing that calculation on the percentage of payment denials reversed through internal appeals processes or administrative law judge rulings.
So... is that the error rate for the 0.2% of patients who file appeals? Surely that group isn't exactly the same as the much larger group who don't appeal?
25: I did also read reporting suggesting that this was mostly spin by very rich anaesthetists on a story that was really just "anaesthetists will get a flat fee per operation rather than massive amounts of overtime" though.
Yes, it seems to be mostly the anesthesiologists (who are among the very highest-paid doctors) complaining that BCBS was trying to pay them according to Medicare rates rather than the much higher rates they typically get from private insurance.
Part of a continuing pattern in American health care: a conflict between two very unsympathetic groups, doctors and insurance companies. One or the other may be on the side of patients in any given conflict but neither is inherently so.
Doctors are way more popular, of course, and they've managed to leverage that into public support on a lot of these things, even though in many cases they're clearly the bigger parasites.
26 is a very good point! Those numbers look exactly like what you'd see if the algorithm was 99.81% accurate!
Kevin Kruse on the new other place keeps pointing out that things like NLRB were put in place for employers, not employees, because the alternative to labor agreements isn't always indentured servitude, it's pitchforks and torches at the billionaire's vacation home.
it is always startling for outsiders to stumble across instances of the monumental violence of US labour history. In the UK we have what was, essentially, a medium-sized shoving match between police and miners with zero fatalities and it's memorialised as "The Battle of Orgreave". The US equivalent has company-sized deliberate infantry attacks on a defence in depth equipped with Gatling guns, one million rounds of ammunition expended, and vigilante airstrikes against civilian targets using poison gas.
Thinking about it, this sort of thing has got to be at the root of the costumed-superhero trend, right? Or more specifically the costumed-supervillain trend. It's a bit ludicrous in a UK context to say "suppose you had a very rich cartoonishly evil man with his own army of heavily-armed uniformed goons" because everyone is like, yeah, right, the Duke of Westminster and his hundreds of henchmen? LOL, but in the US in the 1920s you actually had that.
Jesus
https://x.com/kenklippenstein/status/1864930333914800513?s=46&t=nbIfRG4OrIZbaPkDOwkgxQ
And
https://x.com/kenklippenstein/status/1864932259435786390?s=46&t=nbIfRG4OrIZbaPkDOwkgxQ
29: I don't even think it was the Medicare/ Medicaid rates. It was just allocating a certain amount of time to each procedure using the same formula. The rate is likely to be 1.5-3x Medicare's.
34: One of those comments was from a chair of pathology at a NY university, someone from within the guild still getting screwed by the system.
30: While my love for my fellow physicians has been steadily plummeting, I still find this statement somewhat surprising. Most physicians are at least creating value on some level - to say they are "in many cases they're clearly the bigger parasites" seems odd to me.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2713033
On anesthesia bilking
Most physicians are at least creating value on some level - to say they are "in many cases they're clearly the bigger parasites" seems odd to me.
Most insurance companies also create value on some level - insurance is a valuable service that keeps society running. Most slum landlords, loan sharks and pimps also create value on some level - you can tell because people freely give them money in exchange for their services and therefore their services clearly have a non-zero value.
The real parasites are the friends we made along the way.
Come to that, the marine isopod Cymothoa exigua creates value on some level, because after it has finished chewing off its host's tongue and installed itself inside the host's mouth in order to spend the rest of its life sipping blood from the remaining stump, it actually acts as a tongue to allow the host to continue to eat normally.
Ah, ok. Slumlord, loan shark, pimp, doctor. Got it. Wow.
And grotesque body-horror parasitic tongue-eating louse.
39: The people who pay insurance companies are usually not the people who receive services from them. And it really shows. I
There's a lot of problems caused by doctors, most notably restricting the supply of doctors. Also many American doctors are just paid way too much, which I expect is what teo is referring to. I do think it's weird to say "parasites" though, which usually specifically refers to third parties that don't need to exist. Like we need the doctors, we just need more of them, with less education, lower salaries, and less clout with the government.
I assume that in a Harris win timeline, the shooting would have generated a similar response, but I do wonder if the breadth of it would have been as large or persistent. I suspect some fuel added to the fire by otherwise normies radicalized and/or feeling brutalized by the election.
Which is of course what we're getting, just that they're called Nurse Practitioners and they have to have a doctor supervising, which is kinda parasitic.
47: This response is bipartisan, and if anything leans Trump (Harris voters are more likely to be "but murder is still bad" proceduralists). Odds are good the shooter is a Trump supporter.
42: wow, doc, you misread my comment so badly it's like you mistook it for a medication label in one of the 251,000 cases every year in which medical incompetence causes an avoidable death.
Odds are good the shooter is a Trump supporter.
Agreed, I suspect he'll be similar to the guy who took a shot at Trump; mentally wobbly if not actually mentally ill, vaguely right wing, too much internet.
46: Some should have higher salaries.
48: There are states where NPs can practice independently. Not sure about PAs.
The only things I'm really sure of in healthcare pricing is that social workers not in private practice make way too little and orthopedic surgeons make too much.
Also, the CEO if mg health system got a 12% raise (around 700k) and that is way too much.
46: The doctors who were scrubbing in as out-of-network surgery assistants without the consent of patients were parasites.
Also, health care providers are mostly big systems now and facilities fees etc are a big problem. That's not doctors or nurses per se, but it is the provider community.
This makes me look at the factions of GOP power and how they are doing in the transisiton so far.
Old school awful GOPers and the MAGA nuts seem to be actively dueling it out in areas like Nat Sec and DOJ. Trump clearly prefers the nuts, but the old schoolers are at least somewhat showing up, but if they lose on Hegseth it will be a clear sign they will be bringing up the rear.
But in most everything else the Silicon valley bros/crypto guys* are absolutely dominating, with a lot of more normie CEOs opportunistically and enthusiastically jumping on the bandwagon..
"Free" markets good! Regulations bad!
The William Gibson/Snowcrash foretold world.
Fucking Sacks as AI & Crypto czar. Don't say being the whiniest piece of shit in the world can't get you somewhare.
I apologize if I misread your comment, however if you look at the context, doctors were first stated to be worse than insurance companies (not your comment, I understand), and then you chose to use some of the most parasitic "job descriptions" as analogous to insurance companies. I don't remember a lot of my logic class, but if A is worse than B, and B is similar to C, D, and E, then A is worse than C, D, and E as well. Again, my apologies. Could you explain what you were trying to say?
AIHMHB the surgical facility fee list price when I went a couple years ago was shocking, tens of thousands per hour. One of the best hospitals in the world, but still...
My mantra on MDs is: Remember that almost every doctor was once a premed.
This comment, from Reddit, via a Yahoo article (Yahoo!News still exists?) hit me right in the numbers:
"One medical doctor, whose identity the Daily Beast confirmed, commented with sympathy for Thompson's family and said the killer should be charged with murder, but then wondered about the damage the CEO had done. 'I cannot even guess how many person-years UHC has taken from patients and their families through denials,' they wrote. 'It has to be on the order of millions.'"
Millions of person years would be a lot.
56: I won't try to speak for ajay or teo, but there are times where insurance companies are possibly acting in the patient's best interest. BCBS of MA tried to institute a policy of not covering monitored anesthesia for colonoscopies for average risk patients. Or rather they tried to enforce their policy. I actually worked with their medical director when she worked for my system, and I think they are trying to do the right thing by patients. MAC is very common in the Northeast but less so in other areas. The gastroenterologists, and those who do a lot of procedures are highly paid, spoke out against it, because it's faster when they have a dedicated anesthesiologist and they can do more procedures in a day.
Insurance companies do provide some value. When they are functioning well, they spread risk. Our current system is just a mess.
57: One of the best residents I've met went to school as an engineer (probably because his Dad was) worked and then decided to go to med school. So he was never premed, and he's the exception that proves the rule.
58: millions of person-years is a lot! But not completely infeasible. UHC has fifty million customers, and denies about a third of claims. https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2024/12/05/unitedhealthcare-denies-more-claims-than-other-insurers---angering-patients-and-health-systems/
So, and this is pure back-of-the-envelope guesswork, let's say people claim on their healthcare an average of once a year. (That sounds reasonable. Too low, if anything. On average our local population visits their GP four times a year!)
That would mean UHC denies sixteen million claims every year.
Now, let's say that only 1% of those denials actually affect life expectancy, and they reduce it by an average of just one year. (Again, that seems really, really conservative.)
That's still 160,000 person-years every year. Half a million since Brian Thompson took over as CEO.
Can someone update The Crocodile's Toothache so that it ends in "But what's one health insurance CEO more or less?"
61: I saw a graph somewhere showing that UHC was 32%, Kaiser which is a payvider at full risk was only 7% but the average is 16%. I can't click through your link, because I am not a Forbes subscriber.
63.last: that is odd because neither am I! But it's just a citation for that same 32% figure you gave.
You might be on a different continent. Though because of plate tectonics, you could still be on rocks from the same geological formation.
64: I probably used my quota of free articles.
It helps to think we're sleeping underneath the same big sky.
In a big county, dreams stay with you.
Speaking of wintertime, it's seasonably cold here. Which I find reassuring because we haven't had as many cold days in December in the past few years as I remember from the Decembers of yore.
It's finally seasonably cold here, too! I'm wearing a sweater and really savoring it.
I'm wearing a sweater with holes in both elbows and regretting not having leather elbow patches.
I'm wearing a sweater with holes where the buttons go in. It's a cardigan.
I'm wearing a sweater with a hole where my head comes out.
You climbed in through that hole and your feet don't stick out the bottom as there's no hole there.
First, imagine a spherical Ajay. A ball, if you will.
I want to believe the shooter was, or was hired by, someone mistreated by UHC. But I'm leaning towards it being arranged by someone who knew him, probably his wife, from whom he was separated. The engravings on the bullet casings are so corny, they cannot possible have been done in earnest.
78: This interview in Slate was actually interesting. There are some things that are unusual about it.
I read on Bluesky that they are using AI to identify the shooter. So, he's probably going to get away with it.
The engravings on the bullet casings are so corny, they cannot possible have been done in earnest.
Just writing, I think, not engraving. On the brass. With a marker pen or something.
Looking at the reports... is it just me or is it really obvious that the smiling guy they released the photos of is not the shooter?
Shooter's jacket has a waterproof synthetic fabric hood (Goretex or something), no hood drawstrings, no breast pockets, and elasticated wrist cuffs. The hood's quite tight-fitting - you can tell because the top of his head pushes up against it and causes radiating wrinkles in the fabric outwards in all directions from the top of his head. It's got a pale-coloured zipper pull, which you can see because the jacket doesn't have a flap over the front zip. Shooter's bag is an old-school bergen-type rucksack coming to a point between his shoulders, pale brown or fawn in colour, with large buckles actually sitting on top of each shoulder (which is unusual) and he's wearing it on both shoulders.
The guy whose face you can see has a normal fabric hood - it's much less stiff and has fewer wrinkles, and it also fits his head much more loosely - with dangling pale green drawstrings, two flapped breast pockets, and no wrist cuffs. It's got no visible zipper pull because it has a flap that covers the zip. His bag looks black or dark-coloured, and it's more modern - zip closure at the bottom, side straps and a chest strap (unfastened).
Either the shooter changed his clothes and bag to something similar but not the same... or these are two different dudes.
81: They're going to arrest the guy from the Princess Bride.
Lots of people are saying that. I assume NYPD doesn't have a better clue and care more about looking like they have a clue than finding the guy.
I'd never heard of Brian Thompson but I definitely knew UHC was the worst and my immediate thought was "yeah, that's the worst of the worst ". I didn't know *how much$ worse. But my feed right now is full of friends who spent real time this week fighting claim denials by UHC.
We had some very bad experiences with Kaiser when my mother-in-law was ( finally ) diagnosed.with cancer, and we will always wonder if her primary care physician completely dropping the ball when she first had symptoms didn't destroy her chances of early treatment / longer life. But it was also clear that her PCP was extremely overworked and burned out from the pandemic, and that many of the problems with getting the diagnostics done quickly were because of genuine scarcity of resources and also symptom.confusiin in light of Covid. And once the diagnostics were done and an oncologist was on the case they moved into high gear and did everything and I think they did give her a few good months. We gripe about the somewhat high salaries the Kaiser execs have but none of them are paid anything on the scale of a private insurance executive. No one is getting filthy crazy rich at Kaiser. We have had one lousy ER experience and three fantastic ER experiences. Absolutely excellent prenatal care,.labor and delivery ( including an emergency C-section with absolutely phenomenal bedside manner and the teeniest scar and wonderful follow up -- I still get teary eyed when I think about how reassuring and warm and diligent and communicative this surgeon was ) and pediatrics. Mental health previously up and down but for my postpartum depression really good. And the electronic coordination of everything is really a lifesaver for someone with ADHD. If universal health Care looked like everyone being able to choose between a few competing Kaiser like networks that were better integrated with University medicine plus single payer bargaining with drug companies and tech companies I would be much happier. As soon as doctors are salaried and incentives are lined up around keeping patients healthy and it feels like resources are at least being spread fairly, the resentment really decreases..
But also if I was writing this episode it would be his wife hiring an amateur.
83: "Why are you wearing a mask? Were you burned by acid or something?"
"Oh, no. It's just that they're terribly comfortable. In the future everyone will be wearing one."
I can't tell if I'm being trolled here, but obviously AI would not fall for that character.
85: I think Kaiser works for a lot of people. But there's also regional cultures in medicine that our different, so what works in California might not work in Vermont. We had an old school HMO that was called Harvard Community Health Plan but they operated clinics not hospitals, and they turned into Atrius a non-profit multi-specialty group which was recently bought out by Optum.
It's tricky though for things that are rarer than garden-variety depression, like early onset psychotic symptoms which really do benefit from a place like UCSF. Or transplant teams etc.
89: I assumed you were referring to the six-fingered man?
The CGI they used for that was amazing.
61, 85.1 The other half-million person years was spent on hold.
I have UHC and it's actually not terrible. Right after the CEO was murdered I got a call from a provider telling me that I might have been overpaying my copays. Probably a coincidence, though the only way to be certain is to assassinate another UHC exec and see if the same thing happens again.
It might be time to burn down our medical system and start over.
IN THIS COUNTRY, IT IS GOOD TO KILL A HEALTHCARE EXECUTIVE FROM TIME TO TIME TO ENCOURAGE THE OTHERS.
It might be time to burn down our medical system and start over.
See, actually, though, right now...
I suspect some fuel added to the fire by otherwise normies radicalized and/or feeling brutalized by the election.
That's an interesting variation on my own theory, which is that we have all become debased and coarsened in general. I'm actually a little bit pleased that I retain some ability to be genuinely sorry that people are reacting this way.
Because, yeah, I am unconflicted about the fact that I wish a different bullet had been aimed a few inches to the right.
A time traveler may have done that to prevent something worse.
Salon has a headline advising: "Murdering CEOs is not a solution."
So... this is actually not something I think about very often, but what are the classic "good" assassinations? They can be good from the POV of humanity, or good from the POV of the assassin who achieved political goals. Even things like Park Chung-hee's assassination -- one of recent history's better shocking plot twists -- seem like they had ambivalent results. I genuinely think that successfully assassinating Trump would be a disaster in every way. I guess I don't know how it would have gone if Reagan had succumbed to his injuries, but I'm going to stick with pessimism there too.
I'm going to assume you've access to time travel.
I genuinely think that successfully assassinating Trump would be a disaster in every way
But for the sake of science...?
On the flip side, I think about how differently things might have gone if Yitzhak Rabin hadn't been assassinated and get sad that one crazy person had such a negative effect. I suppose we can add in MLK, RFK, Malcom X, though the through line is less certain My guess is MLK would have met the right wing smear machine if he'd lived near or into the 21st century.
Obviously, Hitler is the biggest assassination wiff. Interestingly it's probably the closest comparison to Trump. I imagine it would still have been bleak but the wheels probably would have fallen off the Nazi organization with lots of factional fighting.
good from the POV of the assassin who achieved political goals
I guess it depends what Princip's goals were.
Actually, lots of assassins with bad goals got what they wanted. Shirker mentioned Rabin's shooter. Booth got most of what he wanted. I'd assume there are more examples.
I'm not sure any of the '60s USian assassins had clear goals (most don't, obv).
Anyway, I came here in hopes of a Syria discussion. I was away last week, so maybe I missed a major event, but it seems like, starting a couple days ago, Assad's forces are on the run and he may or may not have fled the country? Like, what the hell happened?
One thing I saw claimed that Israel's decapitation of Hezbollah and weakening of Iran, plus Russia's other problems, enabled one of the rebel groups to consolidate power and/or gain relative power, but really I have no idea of the basic facts, let alone cause/effect.
Anybody?
There was a good Bluesky thread on Syria by a guy who seemed to know what he was talking about. The upshot was that one of the Islamist rebel groups has spent the past few years building up its capacity for actual governance in the areas it controls and developing relationships with other groups, including non-Muslims, to enhance its reputation for competence and pragmatism. It's now using that reputation to expand its territorial reach through both military and non-military means.
104: Huey Long? It short circuited the plot of It Can't Happen Here.
I'm not sure any of the '60s USian assassins had clear goals (most don't, obv).
Before the invention of Jodi Foster, it was harder to form a worthy goal.
I suspect the assassinations of MLK and JFK may have been, on balance, good for society. MLK provided a movement that was very likely about to fracture with a martyr who's kept the cause of civil rights in this country in relatively good standing for more than half a century. As for JFK, his murder led directly to passage of some of the most important legislation of the twentieth century, and he was, otherwise, not an especially good president. I also suspect that both MLK and JFK would have seen their reputations destroyed within a decade or two of when they died. Regardless, this is a truly monstrous line of thinking, I'm pretty sure, so I'm gonna stop.
I actually wish I hadn't hit post on 115. It's so easily read in ways that make me queasy.
Just think how much good United is doing by denying the claims of all these potential martyrs who might improve the world by dying.
Too late for apologies, vw. I already fainted.
If it makes vw feel any better, I was considering posting a theory abt the net good of the JFK assassination. My main caveat is that, although JFK was of course a Cold Warrior who wasn't eager to withdraw troops from Vietnam, it's hard to believe he'd be quite as pigheaded as LBJ. But you can't even try to guess at the tradeoffs, and the CRAs will live forever.
If JFK had lived, AIDS would have been a disease of heterosexuals and cured by 1991.
The Cambodian genocide would not have happened, but everyone in Laos would now be selling time shares at the same Red Lobster in Fresno.
I might never have even heard a violin.
the CRAs will live forever.
HAH!
"Murdering CEOs is not a solution."
More of a suspension.
Somebody didn't use enough solvent.
There was a good Bluesky thread on Syria by a guy who seemed to know what he was talking about.
The true sign of a twitter replacement.
I cannot condone lone wolf shootings of health insurance CEOs. They should be executed by guillotine in a public square.
One of my office mates is Canadian, been here about 5 years now. She's actually kind of shocked that the common reaction to a man getting gunned down in the streets in broad daylight borders on Oh hell yes
The Rest Is History had an excellent series on the JFK shooting, pointing out how unlikely it would have seemed that LBJ would escalate in Vietnam - he was very much seen as domestically focused. (This is also a plot point in the JFK novel The Third Bullet in which a CIA officer kills JFK to stop the Vietnam war, but it doesn't work.)
RFK is probably the assassination that worked least well; a Palestinian did it to stop the US sending lots of aid to Israel.
129.last and we've been saddled with his batshit failson
TROH also made the very good point that if there was a deep state conspiracy to commit the US to war in Vietnam, and they were prepared to murder presidents to achieve this, then they should definitely have murdered Nixon when he started talking about withdrawal.
What does the Venn diagram look like, I wonder, of the sets "people who have been giddily happy about the Thompson shooting" and "people who could never bring themselves to support Obama because he ordered the assassination of an American AQ member in Yemen"?
If we're asking people to recall that, the intersection will be empty.
8: I usually apologize for my stupid comments on Standpipe's blog, but this one strikes me as especially stupid and oddly abrasive. There are endless varieties of hatred, and certainly it's easy to hate a person that represents a company that continuously chooses profits over saving lives and reducing pain.
I am sorry,
Don't worry. We've got the power of raw milk and guns.
My perception is that a bunch of theorists kept telling LBJ and his people 'just a little more pressure will make them stand down.' That and the age old 'we'll be greeted as liberators!' These aren't uniquely American delusions, but we have them fully on board.
And I think they were able to scare LBJ that his domestic priorities were endangered -- Goldwaterism must have scared the living daylights out of the guy -- by him becoming the guy who let Communism win. Once it was clear that the alternative was going to be Nixon, LBJ could breathe a sigh of relief.
I'm trying to think of when a foreign force has been broadly greeted as a liberator over a domestic faction. I was alive but busy with other things when Vietnam invaded Khmer Rouge era Cambodia. Does that fairly qualify?
Some people would certainly have seen Sherman's march through Georgia as liberatory, but plenty of others didn't feel it that way.
I think 137.3 is right. I can't think of a better example.
|| Time to refresh your resumes! Opening for a liberal at the New York Times op -ed! (Paul Krugman is retiring)||
Great. If RFK jr works over the FDA, I'll need a new job. But I still won't subscribe to the NYT.
Wikipedia has finally overcome its reluctance to put antelopes fucking on the front page. It's about time, though the camera angle is very demur.
I'm trying to think of when a foreign force has been broadly greeted as a liberator over a domestic faction.
I've always assumed that this fantasy is about the two world wars, and particularly D-Day: two pretty anomalous engagements that became the platonic ideals of American warfare. Every bad government is Vichy France; every postwar settlement is as harmonious as Japan after the atomic bombs. While neither of those events is exactly what you describe, the fantasy they generated always works if you assume that a) the U.S. has correctly identified the bad guys and b) the vanquished party will see immediate economic and social rewards from its surrender, versus spiraling costs from continuing to fight. This was close to accurate for maybe Korea and... anyone else?
(To the extent that this is true it's not remotely original to me or new to you, I get it; I'm just ranting from my barstool here.)
137. The two Cambodians I know (both fortyish, educated, living in the US) dislike Vietnam and shrug about China.
Any guesses how long it takes to find the guy? Four days with no name makes me think at least two more weeks.
He apparently escaped by taking a bicycle to a bus station. Which means he'll be invisible to both police and corporate executives.
Possibly India in Bangladesh 1971, Tanzania in Uganda 1978.
Someone somewhere said that the camera footage of him showing is face is likely someone else, unless he completely changed his outfit and backpack before the shooting. Haven't bothered to check but wouldn't put it past the NYPD to be blatantly wrong and sloppy.
Kuwait?
Or I guess we're counting being occupied by another country as a different thing?
43: I'm not sure it's fair to bring Stephen Miller into this discussion.
A long time ago in a skyscraper not far away from my current office, my second temp job for the firm I now work for consisted of scanning in the HR files of stockbrokers who, at the time, were all categorized as independent contractors. Easily half of them included strongly worded letters about how awful the company's insurer (at that time Aetna) was. When I came back to the firm as a full time employee ten years ago, the medical insurance was through Medica, a local nonprofit insurer that was truly a blessed arrangement, a dweam wifin a dweam. Then, a couple years in we switched to fucking United Health, and while it is not quite as bad as Aetna was, they did stick me with a $3,500 charge for one of my heart attacks that they really should have covered. Paying it off on time now cause I got sick of fighting it.
Having worked for the parking coordinator at a large teaching hospital in my youth, my sympathy for doctors AND nurses is always going to be limited. The whining! The enwhitelment! But hospital administrators are a thousand times worse. Not the ones responsible for parking, but everyone else.
Yeah, driving out an invader is a different thing. I don't consider our use of force in WWII to have been focused on Vichy and the other quislings, but on Germany.
I recall reading that Vichy was the enemy at the beginning of the US North Africa campaign, but even then I think the perception was one of diminished agency.
Good Michael Kidman thread on implications of developments in Syria for Russian influence in MENA and elsewhere. https://bsky.app/profile/michaelkofman.bsky.social/post/3lcqep3obk22n
Speaking of which, reports of rebel groups taking some suburbs of Damascus.
Georgia is also being restive. It seems like Russia's focus on Ukraine is degrading its ability to manage the rest of its empire.
154: right but Communism specifically was believed to blur the lines between foreign invader and domestic faction, for the entirety of the Cold War. And then that blurriness persisted in fantasy, as protean as needed ("Axis of Evil" etc.).
156: Their allies are set to win in Georgia, came shockingly close to winning in Moldova, and may be about to win the presidency in Romania.
145. William of Orange, England, 1688. Happens from time to time. How it gets treated in the history books depends on how pissed off the traditional elite in the "liberated" country was at the regime that got overthrown.
139- they're goin to hire Saiselgy and call him a liberal, aren't they.
Times are changing, SP! This is their chance to offer Chris Rufo some money, instead of just paying him in tongue baths (not the parasitic ki... well...)
The reward is up to $50k. I think that means they're stuck.
148- the pictures from the hostel are some previous day (I guess he'd been staying there a while) with a different jacket and backpack. I haven't seen an explanation of why anyone thinks that's the specific guy, but definitely not the stuff he was wearing on the morning in question.
They said they're feeding the images to an AI to identify possible suspects so I'm surprised they haven't arrested a Black guy yet.
Anyway, Charley, your point stands and everything you've said is correct. I'm just trying to pin down a vague theory of vagueness for my purposes, because I think the "greeted as liberators" fantasy is weirdly accommodating of situations that are, as you say, very uncommon, and I also wonder why.
I heard the image AI stuff was trained on porn. That guy had no tits, so he probably doesn't computer.
Apparently, the suspect's backpack was found full of Monopoly money. This clearly means he cheats at board games. Society will turn against him.
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Did everyone see this in The Guardian?
"With red 3, we have a petition in front of us to revoke the authorization board, and we're hopeful that in the next few weeks we'll be acting on that petition," Jim Jones, the FDA's deputy commissioner for human foods, told a US Senate health committee on Thursday.
So typical of the corrupt Biden regime to put a guy like that in charge of human foods!
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165 I think we think we'll be greeted as liberators because our cause is self-evidently just. We're the good guys, and if people would only tune out the evil naysayers, and the fifth column within the US they'd all see it.
He's fine on foods. Beverages are the problem.
167: That is some serious trolling, no?
He was probably just stealing from the bank on his last Monopoly game.
I've mentioned before that a relative was a military person at the US Embassy in an Eastern European country and in the early 70s someone broke in to his apartment and stole the Monopoly money.
Mildly interesting Yahoo News article on why online true-crime enthusiasts/sleuths are "meh" about hunting for Thompson's killer.
174: That guy would be way too old.
175: Wait for season 5 of Only Murders in the Building.
I've become just a part of a mob. The NYT was right.
I found that article a little disheartening. United Health is bad, possibly even evil, therefore this guy who just stalked its executive across state lines to murder him isn't dangerous enough to worry about? I'd be more sympathetic if the line were "yeah, this guy is probably dangerous, but I'm waist deep in investigations of more heinous crimes that are much lower-profile and I'm not going to triage this one." Hopefully that is in fact the case.
Lurid demands the arrest of the notorious outlaw, Robin Hood.
In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police, who hector black people, and the internet busybodies, who judge the worthiness of murder victims. These are their stories.
Random people on the internet are reporting that Assad did a Henry Blake.
I hate cool people. I just want order and a well-fortified castle in which to quietly practice my lute.
However, if it's relevant, I didn't personally do anything to Assad.
I very deliberately sought out other eye doctors just to spite him.
William of Orange, England, 1688. Happens from time to time. How it gets treated in the history books depends on how pissed off the traditional elite in the "liberated" country was at the regime that got overthrown.
Yes, I was just going to mention this one. I'm currently reading G. M. Trevelyan's classic book on it from 1938, which is surprisingly relevant to the current political moment in the US.
(The relevance is about the similarities between James II and Trump in their attitudes toward executive power. I don't think foreign intervention is the solution for the US right now.)
Holy shit what wonderful news to wake up to
The reports of Assad's plane going down are now coming from people who have never skeeted Alf's penis. So it is looking more reliable.
So what happened to American clients in Iraq and Afghanistan now happens to Russian and Iranian clients in Syria. Schadenfreude am Sonntag!
Now that you've had a warm moment to savor that: USD100 to the charity of your choice says Iran tries for nuclear breakout before Jan 20.
Relevant on the southern front:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/07/18/syria-uprising-assad-daraa-suwayda/
My favorite charity is the Iranian Society for Uranium Enrichment.
Also:
https://www.mei.edu/publications/centcom-says-isis-reconstituting-syria-and-iraq-reality-even-worse
Watching the prisoners released from Sednaya is incredible, many of them thought Hafez al Assad was still alive and in power
Can't donate to Iran, Mobes. SWIFT and all that.
So, is Assad still presumed splatted?
86: I'd edit the script so it'd be the one time that the hitman the wife contacted wasn't actually a cop running an entrapment scheme.
It's interesting how there hasn't been a screw-up by the shooter. Because most of "police work" really seems to rely on the fact that the answer is either obvious or that most people are bad at crime.
Eric Adams says they already know the guy's name, but they aren't naming him because he goes to a different school so we won't have heard of him.
My Canadian girlfriend assassin.
Funny thing is I was working at a summer camp in Canada when I was 17 and some younger girls asked if I had a girlfriend and I lied and said I did back at home so I did the reverse, fake American girlfriend.
I have a girlfriend. You wouldn't know her. She lives in fear of her parents losing their health insurance.
I have a girlfriend. You wouldn't have seen her. She was trained to hide under her desk if a stranger comes to the door.
She was trained to hide under her desk immediately pepper spray people in the face if a stranger comes to the door.
206: What an asshole.
I got lunch at a Chinese restaurant with a hand-written help wanted sign written in Spanish in the window. And the sign was discriminatory, asking one for women to apply.
206 is odd because I'm sure people here (like politicalfootball, for one) said that it was OK to physically assault journalists if they get in your face and are really annoying.
Wait, did Assad kill Brian Thompson?
Are there receipts for 208? You can't reliably search the archives anymore, but the only thing I can think of is the Gianforte incident...
So, this discussion? Was there a separate one with PF?
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_16028.html#1957514
I met Gianforte a couple of years after that. He didn't hit me.
[I was lobbying for the Pacific Northwest Trail. Moby, when are you going to go for a real hike?]
I have no idea how I would do in a real mountain. Pennsylvania is up then down then up, etc. I'm not sure how well I would do on a 2000 foot elevation gain.
Ajay might be asleep by now. Politicalfootball, hey! Hey PF! I'M JUST WONDERING IF YOU HAVE A RESPONSE TO ALLEGATIONS that you think it's okay to hit annoying journalists in the face? Is it? Sir, our readers are eager to know your views on the ethics of physical assault. Do you have an answer to share with them? And I have a follow-up.
I don't even have a bear cannister. Just a Kevlar bag.
219: Hikes that are just up are harder, but usually the grades are less steep (bc more up, also bc not PA/WV.). Relentless -- the Calabat and I did ~2000 feet over three miles --- but also, a fit but untrained 11yo did it with his fit mom who doesn't really train for hiking on the assumption that it's just walking and then it turns out the backpack is 25lbs.
Overtaken by events, but informative:
https://tcf.org/content/commentary/syrias-civil-war-has-roared-back-how-far-can-the-rebels-go/
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-says-it-will-destroy-syrias-heavy-strategic-weaponry-2024-12-09/
Maybe they're just grabbing some better topography, but if I were an Israeli fascist I would be thinking, why not go for broke? Syria's a failed state, there's no-one in the way, no-one will do anything: push all the Palestians out over the Golan, close the border behind them. Done. Permanent victory.
Probably what they will do once Trump is in.
The flagrant disregard for international law including the 1974 disengagement agreement which is still in effect really is astonishing. Syria has not attacked Israel, this is an outright war of aggression. They are now seizing land to make a buffer zone for their buffer zone; and this barely a week after the Times of Israel published an editorial calling for more "lebensraum" for Israel (yes, that's the word that was used, it's truly masks off). Nothing is permanent, like Assad and other rogue states it works and keeps working until one day it doesn't.
The Room Next Door suffers from clunky dialogue and is possibly just too mild, but is worth your time. It felt fitting for our graying world. The photography and design are gorgeous and I guess a smorgasbord of references to 20C US art for people who know about it.
Possiblt that should have gone in the other thread.
and we've been saddled with his batshit failson
I went to Wikipedia to see how many kids RFK had; I expected several and to suggest the odds of at least one failson were fairly high.
He had ELEVEN?!
Irish people do that sometimes. Or used to.
Supposedly the police are questioning a guy in Altoona about the shooting. My guess is that if you think the answer to your question is in Altoona, you've asked the wrong question.
What small city was the model for Railton in Richard Russo's Straight Man which is et at a fictional West Central Pennsylvania University (standing in for Penn State- Altoona)?
But they say they found a manifesto.
The person who called the cops on him gets Medicare.
If I had to learn about it, so have all of you.
235: I have Medicare. And a supplement managed by UHC (though AARP).
237: I insist upon the authentic Altoona pizza with Velveeta! The pizza in the photo is made with slices of American cheese -- an abomination!
Apparently the originating hotel switched from Velveeta to American. And then burned down, the natural or supernatural cause an exercise for the reader.
That's also where Sheetz started. The place is a culinary disaster.
Finding myself genuinely bummed that they seem to have caught this guy. But I don't endorse assassinations!
I know. Truly wish he had fully pulled it off.
I suppose there is still jury nullification to get the point across.
They may have the wrong guy still. Maybe everyone in Altoona has a strange gun and a manifesto?
245: My guess is jury selection consists mostly of keeping someone who would nullify off the jury.
241: "It is a great example of the Altoona that I remember," says Berry. "Not good, but memorable. ... That's my experience of Altoona in a nutshell I guess."
241: "It is a great example of the Altoona that I remember," says Berry. "Not good, but memorable. ... That's my experience of Altoona in a nutshell I guess."
247: Sure, but only would require one good liar.
243/244: just to make my position clear: I feel like I know which way to bet on whether an angry young white American who has already planned and carried out one murder will limit himself only to worthy targets. I guess I wish I had more faith in our nation's gun-wielding, manifesto-writing psychopaths?
252: This feels similar to how the Unabomber's manifesto made some good and reasonable points.
He can't be a psychopath unless he's from the Psyche region of France.
Based on what we know about the investigation so far I'm not at all convinced they have the right guy.
At the end of the day, if the nations gun-wielding psychopaths switch from targeting schools to targeting CEOs, that's a net win.
This is actually the second instance of this pattern. The first was the kid who shot Donald Trump's ear.
I don't think he actually hit the ear.
That's only because Trump was spared by God.
Luigi Mangione translates to "Louis the Eater", apparently.
Had to be a bullet fragment from the firefighter who got killed, right?
Louis the Eater would be a great pseud.
He's apparently a Jonathan Haidt fan.
He has Opinions about the scourge of modern architecture & how to solve Japanese fertility (banning sex toys).
Feel bad for Luigi. Seems to have been a smart, successful kid. Wonder if he had some kind of mental break.
Surely this was the work of a Waluigi
243, 244. Same. Also disappointed he's carrying all this evidence with him. Wish his being framed was a credible conspiracy theory.
243, 244. Same. Also disappointed he's carrying all this evidence with him. Wish his being framed was a credible conspiracy theory.
243, 244. Same. Also disappointed he's carrying all this evidence with him. Wish his being framed was a credible conspiracy theory.
https://x.com/kath_krueger/status/1866191517246947555?s=46&t=nbIfRG4OrIZbaPkDOwkgxQ
253: This feels similar to how the Unabomber's manifesto made some good and reasonable points.
Other than the bombs how was the stay in the backwoods cabin, Mr. Kaczynski?
Yeah, based on LinkedIn, dude seemed on his way to a comfortable but dull life of data platform migrations. He doesn't seem to fit the "aggrieved loner with no prospects" trope at all.
For those who don't click links, 270 is the guy rating the Unabomber manifesto on what looks to be Goodreads.
He deserves to be caught, because he went to McDonalds instead of the Sheetz across the street.
He follows Erowid on Twitter. Also Ezra Klein
If you are Louis the Eater, sometimes you just gotta eat.
252: This feels similar to how the Unabomber's manifesto made some good and reasonable points.
From the first link I read:
In his lengthy review, Magnione described Ted Kaczynski's "In Industrial Society and Its Future" as a book "clearly written by a mathematics prodigy" adding that it "reads like a series of lemmas on the question of 21st century quality of life.""It's easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies" the review reads. "But it's simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out."
He adds: "He was a violent individual - rightfully imprisoned - who maimed innocent people. While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy luddite, however, they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary."
Later in the review, he states:
These companies don't care about you, or your kids, or your grandkids. They have zero qualms about burning down the planet for a buck, so why should we have any qualms about burning them down to survive?
We're animals just like everything else on this planet, except we've forgotten the law of the jungle and bend over for our overlords when any other animal would recognize the threat and fight to the death for their survival. "Violence never solved anything" is a statement uttered by cowards and predators.
Surely this was the work of a Waluigi
I get this joke!!
Oh man, 270 is taking me back to something I wrote here, in a fit of tremendous rage, about a guy whose response to climate inaction was to relentlessly hector and torment his family until they all cut him off. YOU. HAVE. TO. ORGANIZE. Zero fucking credit for your very best thoughts about what one superman/ supervillain can or should accomplish. If his deed inspires positive collective efforts, I mean -- great, have at it, but this sort of lone-wolf direct action is cruel and stupid. (Unless one of you contrarians wants to argue for the Unabomber's legacy of lasting positive change? Spike, you up?)
How collective do you want to get? I mean do we all have to go out and shoot health insurance CEOs or is it fine if only a few of us do it
Yeah, I mean the anti-abortion movement organized for decades of domestic terrorism and look where it got them.
282: I don't have all the answers, but can you at least rob the CEOs before you kill them? As long as someone gets the bag, the numbers are up to you.
one of you contrarians wants to argue for the Unabomber's legacy of lasting positive change? Spike, you up?
I got nothing for the Unabomber, but I am curious if he would look at the landscape today and feel as if, for all his trouble, he accomplished anything toward actually achieving his goals for society. I suspect not, which just goes to show that mailing random bombs to people is not particularly effective as a theory of change.
It's possible that he had a psychotic break but his actions seem pretty rational given his motives. It seems he considers life in prison a worthwhile trade off for getting everyone to focus on how terrible health insurance companies are. He accomplished that, though bringing about any systematic change is yet to be seen.
Also people seem trying to paint him as a right wing incel but I don't think that's accurate. His views (if not his actions) seem to be pretty normal for Gen Z white men? Apparently he's a big fan of Joe Rogan. My guess is some sort of libertarian/anarchist would be a better label.
I'm not necessarily condoning domestic terrorism, but if we have to have it killing healthcare CEOs is a much better alternative than most of the previous targets.
This makes me a terrible deontologist but if you told me to pick one of the following groups to be shot I wouldn't hesitate overly much:
1) elementary school children
2) women
3) black people
4) immigrants speaking a foreign language in public
5) low level government workers
6) abortion providers
7) health insurance CEOs
"if the nations gun-wielding psychopaths switch from targeting schools to targeting CEOs, that's a net win."
I think this not-very-well-thought-through opinion lasts until he realises that NGOs have CEOs too (, fir instance https://naacp.org/people/derrick-johnson) and they'll be the targets of the side with more people, more nutters and more guns.
287: Oh yeah? Well, what if the health insurance CEO is also an elementary school child???
It is time for me to go out and touch some ticks. I'm completely loopy.
Sometimes when we touch, the Lyme is just too much.
I have a rash, bullseye, on my hide.
There does seem to be some evidence of a psychic break of some kind.. Fell out of touch with some people some months ago.
And he last touched his Goodreads account this past January.
You need total focus to solve the problem of people in Japan masturbating too often.
dude seemed on his way to a comfortable but dull life of data platform migrations
This is a sick burn, by the way. I feel seen.
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One of my genius colleagues decided to write an op-ed calling the governor out for the attack on higher Ed while sounding like an absolute elitist dork and while failing to make any kind of case for the university. So now they're mad, but because my program is housed in his college, when they decide to target social sciences it will end up hitting us. Anyhow colleagues were on the #sobrave #truthtopower so I pointed out that people writing tone deaf essays should also draft letters to their colleagues who will get fired. I am like Czechoslovakia, dear reader, or perhaps Chamberlain, in the judgment of others.
So. Things are great!
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dude seemed on his way to a comfortable but dull life of data platform migrations
I didn't see the profile and it may now be private, but I've ended up in what might be considered a similar business (in an educational institution context) and am trying to get out of it, but without any homicides.
296: Stay away from manifestos, too. They're a bit of a gateway drug to homicides.
I'm just trying to live my life by universally accepted moral principles, but not the ones that contradict the other ones.
I thought the idea of using an untraceable murder weapon was that it couldn't be traced back to you after you ditched it while fleeing the crime scene. Seems like the guy forgot a key step.
I wonder if he wanted to be caught so he could upload his scheduled YouTube manifesto? (Which seems to have been genuinely in the works; a Google flack said the account found & removed was indeed his.)
But more likely he's got mental issues & the meticulousness with which he apparently planned the murder & escape was not evenly distributed over his days.
NYPD is now saying that they had no idea where he was until they got the random tip from the Altoona McDonald's, which makes me more confident that he is in fact the guy.
One of the most surprising things about all this is the man was a CEO with an income in the 10s of millions a year and he lived in a house that cost a million dollars. As a coastal elite I weep.
It's enough to make me wonder why I spent the day debating a data migration strategy when I realistically could probably retire and move back to the middle west.
why I spent the day debating a data migration strategy
It passes time that would otherwise be spent on doing crimes.
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Back to 139: I read Krugman's final column and yeah, I think the end of that era has come. In fairness, I was never much of a fan, but I'm sure I'll be nostalgic once the coming wave of high-profile cultural conservatism is upon us.
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284- See, I figured this is the kind of thing Anonymous would be doing longer term, Robinhooding centimillionaire dipshits who make money off insurance claim denials, but I guess they still most do stuff like DDOS attacks.
It was probably his favorite gun. With the silencer jonx, I can see why he wouldn't want to ditch it.
China's U.N. Ambassador Fu Cong said after the council meeting that "the situation needs to be stabilized and there has to be an inclusive political process, and also there should not be a resurgence of terrorist forces."
One of those "pick any two" situations.
https://x.com/ginnyhogan_/status/1866282961470906623?s=46&t=nbIfRG4OrIZbaPkDOwkgxQ
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/12/06/south-korea-yoon-coup-civil-military-history-army/
311 me.
307: "Robinhooding" seems unintentionally accurate given that Robin Hood in most versions is an outlawed aristocrat and the suspect is an incredibly wealthy graduate of what is apparently thought of as a prestigious and expensive university.
The note that the suspect's immense family wealth comes from running a huge and incredibly profitable chain of nursing homes seems a little much, though. This isn't Robin Hood so much as Game of Thrones.
313: what is apparently thought of as a prestigious and expensive university.
Seen on Bluesky: Right now Mangione is saying to some cop, "No, not Penn State."
He's quite young to have such serious back issues. It may be that the family business gave him some special insight into, and fear of, a being chronically disabled. But the "long story" bit about his response to being asked about a surgery before disappearing makes me wonder if they found some kind of terminal cancer.
He's quite young to have such serious back issues. It may be that the family business gave him some special insight into, and fear of, a being chronically disabled. But the "long story" bit about his response to being asked about a surgery before disappearing makes me wonder if they found some kind of terminal cancer.
He's quite young to have such serious back issues. It may be that the family business gave him some special insight into, and fear of, a being chronically disabled. But the "long story" bit about his response to being asked about a surgery before disappearing makes me wonder if they found some kind of terminal cancer.
Prior art in this field - I wonder if Mangione had some help?
Not that Thompson was helping the war effort particularly, but they could have hoped that his murder would help stir up political unrest...
It's looking more like the typical onset of pschizophrenia in a mid-20s male, isn't it?
I spent six years doing data analysis for studies of people with schizophrenia. No one had a backpack that nice.
Agree with 322, people are overthinking this.
323: And how many of them were within a year of onset and very rich?
None. But that's not important in my theory.