A sad and weird family background

The Washington Post has a story on the family background of the guy who shot up the Colorado gay bar, and it sounds terribly complicated and a pretty sad story.  And I'm not telling it because of the political aspects that get a mention - I'm telling it because it seems pretty clear that both parents seem to have some pretty serious psychological issues:

Until age 15, he was known as Nicholas Brink, living in San Antonio, public records show. His parents separated when he was a toddler, and when he was 12, his mother, Laura Voepel, was arrested for suspected arson, according to court documents. She was later found guilty of a lesser offense in connection with the same incident.

At age 15, he became the target of a particularly vicious bout of online bullying in which insulting accusations were posted to a website, along with his name, photos and online aliases, according to a review of the site by The Washington Post. At some point, a YouTube account was created under his name, featuring a crude, profanity-laden animation under the title, “Asian homosexual gets molested.”

Brink was born in 2000 as the only son of Aaron and Laura (nee Voepel) Brink, of Orange, Calif., and a year later, in July 2001, the couple separated. Their divorce was finalized in September 2001, court records showed. Laura gained full custody of the toddler, along with an order forbidding any contact between father and son. In following years, she moved with her baby to Texas, living at times with the boy’s maternal grandmother.

Brink’s maternal grandfather is state Rep. Randy Voepel, a Republican assemblyman who in the past has aligned himself with the tea party movement and spoken in favor of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Voepel lost his seat in November after a redistricting change.

The family was living in San Antonio at the time of Laura Voepel’s arrest on arson-related charges in 2012. The case wound its way through a Texas court for several years, and according to court records, the defendant was ordered to undergo psychological evaluations and mandatory drug testing. Her trial resulted in the dismissal of the arson charge but she was found guilty on a lesser charge of criminal mischief.

The father, bizarrely, is being reported as a Mormon (and the Washington Post says the son was technically a member of the church) who is now a mixed martial arts coach but has also worked as a (straight) porn actor.     His comments about hearing about his son in a gay bar indicate he was initially worried he was gay, which Mormons "don't do".   (There is video of him - and the demeanour alone is a worry.)

I've read somewhere that the son was mainly raised by the mother's parents.  

I will add that, on the political aspect of gun control, if there are any Right wingers complaining that the shooter should have been the subject of the "red flag" laws after he was arrested (but not prosecuted for) threatening to harm his mother, the strong suspicion is that it is Right wing elements of law enforcement in Colorado who are reluctant to use it:

A “red flag” order, also known as an Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO), could have allowed authorities to seize any guns the Club Q suspect had, and it would have barred him from purchasing other weapons. A search of public records found no indication that the sheriff’s office or other authorities filed such a petition. The charges in the case were dropped and the case was sealed.

But local law enforcement are not required to file red flag petitions. And leaders in conservative areas like El Paso County — where the nightclub shooting and the 2021 incident happened — have criticized the idea that the government should seize weapons from people who haven’t been convicted of a crime.

For example, in 2019, local district attorney Michael Allen derided the red flag law as “unconstitutional,” tweeting that it was “[n]othing more than a way to justify seizing people’s firearms under the color of law.”

After the law was implemented, he tweeted: “This law is a poor excuse to take people’s guns and is not designed in any way to address real concrete mental health concerns.”

In the 2021 incident, the Club Q suspect was arrested after allegedly threatening his mother with a “homemade bomb, multiple weapons and ammunition,” the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office reported at the time. 

He was also wearing body armor and had live-streamed himself in a standoff with law enforcement. It’s unclear whether he was armed at the time. 

Rep. Meg Froelich, a Democrat, said the legislature should examine how local authorities are using — or failing to use — the red flag law.

“Is it being applied and enforced? That’s something we want to look at,” Froelich said. She added that she wants to know whether a red flag order could have been applied in the case of the gunman who last year killed five people in a rampage that struck several tattoo shops in Denver and Lakewood.

 

The ridiculous amount of culture warring that serves as a useful distraction for gun control

To be fair, both sides of the culture wars do it:  try to work out whether the latest mass shooter in the US can be fitted into the other side's politics.  

A reason the Left shouldn't do it - or be very, very cautious about it - is that the suspicion doesn't always follow through.  It seems clear now, for example, that the big gun massacre of a gay nightclub in Orlando a few years ago was not a case of gays being targetted.  According to Vox, even the Right assumed it was, but it turns out to have been a Muslim "revenge" attack based on a mere Google search for any nightclub..   

The Right now think they are a similar "win", with the defence saying that the Colorado gay nightclub shooter of a couple of days ago is "non binary".   So they are rubbing their hands with glee that his or her (OK, "their") politics are probably not Right wing at all.  Although, who knows, they might be.  Most likely, though, given previous threats of violence to their mother, the shooter is just another mentally disturbed American with access to guns that they wouldn't have access to in any sane, well run, country.   Their politics is not going to change that one way or another.

Today, there is news of a pretty different style of mass shooting in America (subject to confirmation) - a manager shooting up other staff, rather than the more typical case of the underling going after management.   What is it going to matter what this guy's politics were?    

I understand the Left side's temptation to assume that, say, attacks on gay venues are by Right wing sympathisers; I mean when you get the God-awful Tucker Carlson running with something like this line...

...well, the Right itself is suggesting that shootings are a result of the culture war they are stoking.   And sometimes, the offender has indeed been completely sucked in by Right wing conspiracy theories, like the Pizzagate shooter, making the culture war aspect directly relevant. 

But, the main reason I find it a game the Left should not rush into is because (and this is what drives me nuts about watching it), it's so clear that the Right uses it as a convenient distraction to avoid taking further gun control seriously.

"Oh, so you thought it was a MAGA sympathiser who shot up that nightclub?   Turns out he voted for Obama!  Ha!  We win (and we don't have to talk about AR 15s.  We Won!)"

It's as pathetic as the line that the answer to mass shootings is keeping guns out the hands of the mentally ill - as if the mentally ill are easily identified, easily disarmed, and easily treated if they don't want to be treated.    Again, it's just a stupid way of pretending that it's not really the access to guns that's the issue.

Tries a bit too hard

Hmmm:

Once again, I will opine that I want to like this program more than I do.

The hosts are both likeable and their scripted bits are fine:  what I find problematic is how too many of the guest comedians find too many of their own scripted bits hilarious.  (Wil Anderson often laughs too much at them too.)

It's a program that just seems to be trying too hard - or is too amused with itself - for too much of the time.  

Update:  This, on the other hand, is genuinely funny:

Basically, everything

 What “longtermism” gets wrong about climate change

This tech boy "longtermism" idea has been attracting a lot of criticism lately, all of it justified as far as I can tell.   I doubt that as a semi philosophical idea it has really attracted that much of the public's attention.  But still, it is a worry when the super rich start believing in reasons to downplay the issue of climate change, because they have the capacity to influence public opinion which, in democracies, can lead to inaction.

Spectacular weirdo noticed again

I had to stop following Hanania on Twitter because the weirdness was too much too often.  Noah Smith used to ridicule him too. He's still busy being ridiculous, I see:

Update:   I see that there is a lot of uncertainty as to Hanania's intention here, given that he had seemingly mocked a news case involving a 22 year year women being charged with having sex with a 16 year old boy.  So is this tweet a joke of some kind?   But it still doesn't make sense, as a joke. 

American Christian Nationalism explained

What a good thread at the now crappy Twitter!   (And really, I wish people would just run free blogs - use Blogspot, it doesn't matter) and write their short essay on it and link to it from Twitter, rather than doing Twitter threads that are hard to save and might end up disappearing.)   Apart from that gripe, here we go:

 

Funny because it's true?

Someone I was speaking to recently said that they are prone to existential depression, though.  That might be true, too.  I need to go live there for 12 months to be sure...

The Dutch and high tech food, and your stomach

Wow, there's a lengthy, heavily illustrated, article in the Washington Post about the remarkable Dutch efficiency at food production - which is very research and science based.  I guess I knew they did well for their size, but I didn't realise how much it was based on high technology.   I bet Singapore is jealous.  But then, I see Singapore is far smaller in proportion that I would have guessed - 728 square km versus 41,542!   Less than 2% the size.  No wonder they have trouble being truly independent.

In my final Washington Post gift article for the month, there is also an answer to the question - can you really eat until your stomach explodes?   As I would have guessed, the answer is yes, but it's very rare, and vomiting takes care of the issue for most people.   Regarding competitive eating, there is the matter of training:

The average human stomach can hold about one liter before that feeling of fullness kicks in. But some stomachs can stretch to hold as much as two to four liters.

If the pressure in your stomach significantly increases, you’ll feel nauseous. If the pressure becomes severe, vomiting may occur. Both protect from gastric rupture: The nausea limits how much more you can eat, while the vomiting will decompress the stomach.

In rare cases, the stomach can expand to a dangerous size, known as acute gastric dilatation. When this happens, blood vessels delivering nutrients to the stomach are compressed. The decrease in blood flow can cause damage to the organ’s lining and potentially lead to a tear or rupture. But in the medical literature, there are very few cases of this actually happening due to overeating....

You may wonder why this doesn’t happen to competitive eaters. Joey Chestnut broke a record last year by devouring 76 hot dogs in 10 minutes. His stomach didn’t explode because it’s possible to train your stomach over time to accommodate such large volumes of food in short spans.

Certain medical conditions can increase risk for experiencing acute gastric dilatation and subsequent perforation, including episodes of severe hyperglycemia, in which a person with diabetes experiences dangerously high levels of blood sugar or if an area of the stomach is obstructed. While it is uncommon, chronic disordered eating, including a genetic condition called Prader-Willi syndrome that results in constant hunger and binge eating, can cause stomach rupture. When not caught in a timely matter, these conditions can indeed be fatal. But again, all are exceptionally rare.

 

Masterchef 778,000 BCE

Early human ancestors living 780,000 years ago liked their fish well-done, Israeli researchers revealed Monday, in what they said was the earliest evidence of fire being used to cook.  

Exactly when our ancestors started cooking has been a matter of controversy among archaeologists because it is difficult to prove that an ancient fireplace was used to prepare food, and not just for warmth....

Previously, the first "definitive evidence" of cooking was by Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens 170,000 years ago, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

The study, which pushes that date back by more than 600,000 years, is the result of 16 years of work by its first author Irit Zohar, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University's Steinhardt Museum of Natural History.

During that time she has catalogued thousands of fish remains found at a site called Gesher Benot Ya'aqov in northern Israel.

That's pushing it back quite a lot!  

The evidence is that certain fish teeth have been found in fireplaces and seem to have been "cooked".  They are from a very large carp species:  

And most of the teeth belonged to just two particularly large species of carp, suggesting they had been selected for their "succulent" meat, the study said. Some of the carp were over two meters (6.5 feet) long.

Given how much Australians disdain eating carp, these hominids would not do well on today's cooking shows. 

The adventures of Elon "look at me" Musk

So, Twitter hasn't yet broken down, even temporarily, due to lack of staff.  Instead, we just have been watching the increasingly gratingly immature tweet behaviour of the new owner.   He's giving off a strong "please look at me/like me" vibe, which is something I would have thought having a squillion dollars might cure, but apparently not. 

I am very sure that as soon as an alternative is ready to fly, most of the centrist/Leftist/anti-Trump people I follow will happily migrate to it very quickly regardless of whatever changes Musk may want to make.  (No one seems to have any idea as to what he thinks it can do in future that will make it the essential app that will conquer the world.)  Twitter will just be left to the Musk fanboys and Right wingers who don't care about misinformation and moderation.

There are some who argue that it's giving up too easily to abandon the place - it'll be letting the MAGA and the culture warring Right have a win!  But really, you can't keep participating at a site which does more harm than good without tacitly endorsing it, and I can't see that there is any chance of changing Musk short of personalty transplant.

Mastodon is, it seems, not going to be the alternative (too many people saying that it is too complicated, and I don't understand how decentralised moderation can work), but there's one or two others which seem to be waiting in the wings, probably with people trying to line up enough funds fast enough for it to be able to cope with an onslaught of new users.

Interesting times, but not very gratifying...

In other "things I'm watching, but not all that satisfied with" news

I'm three episodes into the Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of  Curiosities series on Netflix.

It's an anthology horror story show, so it's always hard to know if a random episode is going to really hit it out of the ballpark, as the Americans would say.

But so far, my feeling is that the series is big on atmosphere, but at the cost of satisfying payoff.   And rather than any substantial scares, or even horror that really lingers after viewing, the show plays more to me as just "deeply unpleasant" in a very transient sort of way.

Again, I admit that horror is far from my favourite genre, but this series is making me feel it is a bit like what I said about science fiction in (gosh!) 2008:  have all the good themes really been done as well as they ever will be, and it's pretty much an exhausted genre?   

    

Modern first world problem

I am looking to replace a couple of ceiling fans in the house, and the choice is more confusing than ever:  AC or DC; wall control or remote; remotes that are old fashioned IR or wireless; blades made of some sort of plastic, wood or metal.   

So, you pick a model that seems to have all the features you need, then look at the consumer reviews on Google or elsewhere.  A key feature for a ceiling fan - whether they are noisy or not - on the model I had pretty much settled on, featured about 12 consumer reviews on the matter, and the break down was 6 said it was very quiet; 6 found it noisy! 

A key reason I want this model, though, is that it is controllable through an app on your phone.  That seems a useful feature that should be more common.

Barry - dark gets darker?

My son wanted to watch the well reviewed dark comedy Barry, and we finished the first season last night.

It's mostly enjoyable, for black comedy of the type I am usually pretty leery about.  But I am a bit puzzled about how the last two episodes pretty much ruin the ability to sympathise with the title character.   I mean, while he is shooting up other criminals, there's not too much to have qualms about.   But by the end, the innocent are being killed, after his earlier reluctance to do so.   To be honest, this doesn't give me much incentive to continue with series 2 and 3, and I note that comments on line indicate that series three is ever darker.  :(

I haven't noticed anyone on line saying it, but thematically it has an obvious antecedent in Grosse Point Blanke, the 1997 John Cusack movie that I actually remember little about, except it being about a hit man not enjoying his job anymore, and one particularly unpleasant line of dialogue that stuck in my mind for being too extreme.

My problem with the end of the first series also relates a little to the depiction of violence - for a show with a high body count, it was formerly somewhat discrete in the depiction of gunshot wounds, but that goes out the door in the last episode too.  

It's clearer than ever to me, too, that the key to the entertainment value in this type of story is the compounding trouble that the characters get themselves into, and the audience wondering how they might get out of it.  Pulp Fiction, Breaking Bad (which I will never bother with - but I have a good idea of the plot), Goodfellas:  they are all about how things are falling apart for characters and what they are prepared to do to try to get out of trouble.   But, I will continue to be a conservative-ish stick in the mud and say that, despite the entertainment value of the plotting, I still don't think it is good for anyone's soul to spend too long living in these violent fictional worlds.   I wish there were less of them made - or perhaps, that they were more old fashioned in terms of morality stories.

Twitter really may die - soon

So, it seems that Elon's attempt to force employees to work 16 hour days and sleep in the office, all in the interests of changing Twitter into something that can make money for him, has resulted in so many resignations that many now expect it will break soon, and perhaps permanently.

This is resulting in many amusing, near final, Tweets:

 

I wonder how the RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub is feeling at the moment

Not only is crypto credibility finally collapsing fully, it seems to me that the whole vapourware-ish concept of blockchain technology and Web 3 being something fantastically useful might be on its last legs too.   (Mind you, it is a bit hard to tell from that link whether the problem with ASX's planned new system was that it was blockchain based, or not.)

Oh well.  It kept Sinclair Davidson and Chris Berg off the streets (well, sent them to other countries' streets for a few blockchain conferences, I'm sure) for a few years.  Better than running a conspiracy/hate/defamation blog for conservatives and reactionaries.

I thought I would have a look at the RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub and how it's selling itself.  I had quite the LOL at this part of it:

That's pretty embarrassing....

Overlooked reason why the death penalty is a problem

There's a pretty compelling article at NPR that explains how an often overlooked aspect of the death penalty is the psychological toll it often takes on those who have to implement, or be involved, in it.

There are quite a few people interviewed who explain how it caused them serious, ongoing, post traumatic stress.  I can understand that - reading the article is enough to make me feel bad!  

I just realised from whom Elon Musk learned all his management skills...

(For those outside of the age range to know - Cosmo G Spacely, CEO of Spacely's Space Sprockets and boss of George Jetson.  Catchphrase:  "Jetson!  You're Fired!")

I mean, honestly, Elon's going to be catching that rocket to Mars alone:

Elon Musk has told staff they must commit to a new “hardcore” Twitter or he will fire them, according to reports.

Staff received an email at midnight local pacific time telling them that the company will become “extremely hardcore” in the future.

“This will mean working long hours at high intensity,” he said, according to a number of reports. “Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”

Staff were forced to click “yes” on a link to pledge themselves to the “new Twitter”, with a commitment required by Thursday. If they do not sign that pledge, they will be fired with three months pay, the email reportedly threatened.

More UFOs explained (so it seems)

I recently posted about some pilot sightings of so called "racetrack" UFO lights - lights which were distant, high, and seemed to circle around each other.   

However, that Mick West, who debunked some of the famous military recorded videos, has identified these sightings are almost certainly satellite flares from Starlink.   I think the idea is also that the "racetrack" aspect (of them seeming to move around each other) is a misidentification of separate satellites moving in different paths - so that one fades, and then a new one turns up in the other direction, but it's not the same satellite changing paths (in the way that satellites don't move). 

I think this is a pretty plausible explanation - the problem being that Starlink is really filling the sky with so many satellites it is easier than ever to see them crossing paths, flaring, etc.

However, if there was a pilot sighting (and video) which definitely did show one apparent satellite doing a substantial change of course (without fading first), that would be different.   I am not sure that we have that currently, though.

I should also add that one reason I found these reports interesting was because they sparked a memory of a subtle UFO report that I probably read about in one of J Allan Hynek's books, and dates back to perhaps the 1960's or 1970's.  It involved, (as far as I can recall) a star gazer seeing two high altitude lights which he assume were two satellites, but which then abruptly changed path and started silently circling each other - really ruling out the satellite explanation.  I think they were watched for some time, too.  Of course, high altitude aircraft might do something similar, but they really did just look like satellites until their path changed, making it a pretty peculiar sighting.  (I mean, aircraft lights also usually are going to be flashing, and not be constant like a satellite.)

Anyway, here's the Mick West video:

The Ego has Landed

 Still got that Mussolini smug grin going, I see.

I did see some bits of the speech - all the greatest "hits" delivered in rambling fashion:  the nation under his reign was like heaven on Earth; it's now a crumbling, wretched wreck again that only he can fix.  

Couple of new things I noticed:  death penalty for drug dealers (expressing approval of execution immediately after trial - pretty much the same day - like he reckons Xi told him is the system in China.)   Also a bit of the trans gender stuff (no men in women's sports), which wasn't such a thing back in his first campaign.   

Anyway, he'll be charged before too long, I reckon.   I wonder if that will be the opportunity for Hannity and Carlson to withdraw support?   

Update:  George Will putting out the strong anti-Trump case in the Washington Post points out a few things worth remembering:

Among the Republican nominating electorate, Trump has a floor of forever Trumpers, but the floor is sagging. If his bitter-enders were the questioning sort, they would ask: What states that he previously carried might he lose in 2024, and what states that he previously lost might he conceivably carry in 2024?

His 2016 victory was sealed by wafer-thin margins (a combined 77,744 votes out of 13,940,912 cast) in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. All three just elected Democratic governors, two (Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan and Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania) by landslides over notably supine Trump grovelers who were out of their depths and perhaps their minds. Trump’s marathon post-2020 tantrum was ignited when he was declared the loser in Arizona, which has just elected a Democratic senator and perhaps governor. Georgia, which Trump won by 211,141 votes out of 4,114,732 cast in 2016, and which he lost by 11,779 votes out of 4,999,960 cast in 2020, just emphatically reelected Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), both of whom Trump reviles because they acknowledged the arithmetic of his 2020 Georgia loss....

What handhold can Trump, the entertainer turned bore, now grasp to stop his current slide? He has always been a Potemkin tycoon, parasitic off the superstition that great wealth is somehow symptomatic of other greatness. Hence his tenacious secretiveness regarding his tax returns, which might reveal the fictitiousness of his financial wizardry. New York prosecutors could soon lift the veil....

The midterm elections indicate that a growing number of voters seem inclined to make cool-eyed calculations as unenthralled adults: Do not seek the best imaginable political outcome; seek instead to avoid the worst.

The problem is, though, the Trump base is in a cult and immune to such reasoning.  How the party and its "establishment" is going to deal with that is the puzzle.  (Even though I suspect they will hope that his legal problems will help solve it, we know that Trump will just paint those as the Deep State against him, and fund raise off it.)

 

 

Demography before and after 8 billion

 The Washington Post has an interactive graphic article that lets you put in your age and then learn some specific facts.  I was a bit surprised by much of it.  Here are a bunch of screenshots:

I was expecting more people of my age....

Again, way to make me feel old.

Great.  Somehow, the fact that a handful  of the currently most politically dysfunctional countries are on the path of big population increase doesn't fill me with confidence.

I will add a video to this later...

 

Update:  Here it is.  John Green giving a quick run down on historical demography: