323 school shootings at K-12 this year
Remember all that critical theory stuff people were freaking out about a few years ago?
It’s basically about how society arranges itself to benefit the people who have the power in a society.
Like how crimes against business and capital are serious crimes, but crimes against workers are usually treated as paperwork errors.
Compare the number of people arrested for shoplifting as opposed to the number arrested for wage theft.Or about how the murder of one CEO gets weeks of media attention and a potential development of new systems by the police to keep it from happening again, but we’ve already moved on from the last school shooting, and our official policy is “yeah, that’ll happen from time to time”
Cyberpunk dystopia, but without the cool ass shit, just a lot of ways to die horribly.
just a cyber dystopia, missed out on the punk
Be the punk you wish to see in the world.
Yeah, this is definitely the Kenny G smooth jazz of dystopias. And I mean that in all of the worst possible ways.
You are totally right but the problem is that the people who could do a revolution are all in front of their cellphone or laptop and they only write, they do nothing. They write on X, they write on Facebook but they don’t do anything else. It’s a mute revolution and the corporate knows that nothing will come of this, since the US have elected Trump.
All they have to do is enforce law so no other CEO will get killed and learn from all thid and get better at making the people don’t do anything except write on the internet.
If writing on the internet does nothing, then why did we have to come here to do it freely?
Luigi Mangione manifesto
To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.
The penis mighty
We still have our bread and digital circuses. But the GOP is rapidly eroding our digital circuses, so it’s becoming easier and easier to pull away and live in the real world. They’re authors of their own misery, eventually.
That’s a good point. The white collar crime doesn’t get as much time as a shop lifter.
The specific example of the health care guy says everything about that too. Deny someone health care and they suffer and die? Or maybe hundreds of thousands of people? No problem.
Don’t they make enough money that they can pay their own security or set up their own hotline? Why does the citizens have to pay for it? Maybe their insurance can pay for it since it’s a high risk job.
Watch Congress turn bodyguards into something you can get a tax break for, like they did for private jets under Trump’s tax reform. In the end they’ll find a way to make sure we pay for it, not them.
Employees like that are generally already tax deductable.
Cool. Then the general public should be able to hire bodyguards for their kids in school for massive tax breaks.
We don’t pay for it with a tax break. They still pay for it they just get some money back for doing it come tax time.
Which is money that doesn’t go into the budget to be used for health care, housing or any of the other things ordinary people need.
Which means those of us without a bunch of loopholes to exploit have to pick up the slack.
America on that any% speedrun to become Cyberpunk universe… trauma team, anyone?
I’ve said many times the only thing missing between this reality and a cyberpunk dystopia is full-dive VR.
Android XR just got announced. And given they have little to no idea how to use it, it is going to be a full on ad space.
Where’s my fuckin augs? I want to be able to go to the ripper doc to get sweet upgrades and get hired to do corporate espionage!
This is bullshit my chooms.
Satire is dead. Not enough CEOs have followed suit.
I’m confused. Was there another CEO killed or harmed? Or was it still just the one? I mean, if CEOs were falling like flies in NY state, then I guess it would make sense to have a special hotline for a task force or something.
But if it’s still a tiny number of CEOs, then something like this would be a giant waste of government resources.
Sometimes, wasting government resources is the point.
The only other one I know of is Bob Lee, the Cash App one a year and a half ago. The circumstances were completely different however, as His brother-in-law stabbed him in a ‘scuffle’ after Bob supposedly became manic (from drugs and/or alcohol) and attacked the guy.
The case has been ongoing since, though the jury is supposed to read a verdict in a little under 7 hours (9:30am PST)
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/bob-lee-murder-nima-momeni-verdict/3716867/
Then again, journalists are mostly fair game.
But if it’s still a tiny number of CEOs, then something like this would be a giant waste of government resources.
I think you underestimate how deeply those in power value a CEO vs any one of us.
Edited to add that every single detail about how this case has been handled proves that.
Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin - An Accounting of the Victims of Brian Robert Thompson
If you want to actually look at things quantitatively. I ran the numbers, and by my math, Brian Robert Thompson was responsible for the deaths of 40,000 innocent American souls.
Even by a conservative estimate, he was responsible for more deaths than the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And this figure includes only deaths, not the injuries, pain, suffering, and bankruptcies that resulted from his actions. When these are included, his victims likely number over a million.
9/11 killed “only” 3000 people, didn’t it? These figures are orders or magnitude higher.
I was just quoting the article.
Author is… Not great. Content is good but repeats themselves for paragraphs at a time, weird religious shift at the end, generally very high ratio of words to words that convey a new thought.
Repetition is often necessary in this kind of thing. You have to repeat yourself, lest you be accused of supporting vigilante murder. The intention was to thoroughly explain the methods and assumptions. As far as the religious bent, that’s deliberate. I’m agnostic myself, but I decided to take a very religious “fire and brimstone” framing to the piece. I’ve read so many pieces condemning Luigi as a monster and irredeemably evil. And maybe it’s just my own religious upbringing, but I know of no way to more thoroughly condemn someone than to state that they are literally burning in the fires of Hell itself. That’s not the kind of language one is to use lightly.
I think we could use more fire and brimstone rhetoric against the oligarchs. That’s always been one of the core traditions of Christianity. It’s the money changers in the Temple. The belief that even if the powerful escape accountability in this life, they are still to be shamed, as they will burn in the Pit forever. In today’s world, it’s primarily only the right that uses this language of Damnation, almost exclusively against LGBT people. But I think the left really needs to reclaim this rhetoric. It is a powerful thing to look an evil man in the eyes and to calmly say, “you are going to burn for what you have done in this world.”
Also, this issue is something that appeals to people on all sides of the aisle. I could have written the article from some sort of Marxist class analysis, but that really doesn’t seem appropriate for the moment. I mention a policy solution, Medicare for All, that is usually considered left wing. And I wanted to balance it out with some very traditional religious condemnation.
Fair, I suppose I’m just far more ok with supporting vigilante murder and don’t see the loss of every life as a real loss. But if that’s what you’re going for, fair.
Yeah I’m of two minds. Half the time I’m feeling what Tolkien taught - “many that live deserve death, and many that die deserve life. Will you give it to them?” As I cannot bring the dead back to life, I should not be so quick to endorse the taking of life.
The other half of the time I’m ready to start a crowd funding campaign to erect a giant bronze statue of Luigi.
The latter attitude I tend to reserve for flippant comments and posts. I’ve been on a kick lately about suggesting we chain CEOs to boulders and throw them into the Sea. But when I actually sit down and write something more long form, I tend to take the former approach. Also, I wanted to have something that people could reference as an actual calculation for the real magnitude of Thompson’s crimes. I felt not openly condoning murder was better for that purpose. But I still wanted to have a strong moral component, so I took the approach of “all y’all are goin’ to Hell for this.”
This is like the Trauma Team in Cyberpunk. Rich people who can afford the highest tier get a private militarized swat team to go to them any time they’re in trouble.
Except it’s not even private, it’s funded by public taxes, which is EVEN WORSE THAN CYBERPUNK
Trauma team charges 100 Eddies per minute from when you call them until they deliver you to the hospital, plus spend ammunition and medical supplies. They waive the charge if they need 7 minutes or more to get to you, though. (Not relevant in gameplay, as their response time is 1d6 minutes). And they have heavy weapons to fight their way through to you. So, their services are sort of reasonably priced for what they offer. And even if you don’t earn the big bucks, if you live in a Arasaka living facility and eat kibble, you should have enough saved up to pay for their services if you end up needing them. (Of course, living in an Arasaka living facility may lead to you needing their services)
Point being, “Cyberpunk 2020”'s healthcare system is better than America’s.
Well you haven’t changed that much then. That killed me. British comedy really is better about social and government stuff.
America needs to play this on every channel at least once a week for the next four years. So we can reference it every time Trump brings up selling off the FBI to the Pinkertons.
A Bit of Fry and Laurie is criminally underrated in the US, but a lot of it is very topical to the UK.
They’re less like SWAT and more like US Air Force PJs. Basically, super heavily trained paramedics who are also special operations troops.
We should normalise saying “just another healthcare denial shooting” like people say “just another gang rivalry shooting”.
Giving them a special CEO hotline that normal folk can’t use isn’t going to make them more popular.
“Hi yes I’d like to report that a CEO is about to make a decision that could hurt themselves or millions of others. Yes i would like to have them committed and watched for the minimum amount of time. Thank you for your help.”
If I’m reading this right it’s worse than that.
You know how when you go to the police to report a stalker or someone threatening you and they just kind of roll their eyes and tell you there’s nothing they can do? And you’re left getting a useless restraining order that’s going to do nothing but feature in the news and trial after you get murdered?
This is a hotline for rich people to report stalkers and threats specifically to be acted on. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if they whitelist their phones to be at the front of any queue for 911.
i mean tbf, this is like complaining about the president being protected by the secret service.
Except it’s not at all. We elect the president and give him/her special privilege with that vote. I don’t and would not vote for my tax dollars to pay for billionaires getting special protection.
Maybe set up something like Disney Pass, or whatever it’s called. Let the CEOs pay for preferential 911 service. And make them pay a LOT.
It’s called private security
When a school shooting occurs the cops wait outside for the kill count to rack up.
There are two things that the aftermath of Luigi’s action has made poignantly clear to pretty much everybody:
- That the vast majority of people no matter their party affiliation and political leanings is feeling the pain and hates the abuses that carry on being committed by a minority of people in our system with total impunity … until Luigi.
- That the Ju$tice System, the Police and most of the Press, unlike what they claim work for that minority of people, not for the rest of us.
It’s amazing just how certain parts of the system that are supposed to work for everybody (such as in this case the Police, and in other cases large parts of the Press with their “poor CEO” articles) are pretty much shouting loud and clear for all to hear that “we’re not working for you, we work for the ones that abuse you”.
Most people just discovered now with this killing of a hated CEO that what they individually felt about certain things was also felt by almost everybody, and then these bought-and-paid-for minions who for decades have been putting a lot of effort in passing themselves as “working for the community” just repeatedly and overtly signal to everybody else their true minion-of-the-rich nature.
Mind you, as a Leftie who has been skeptical of whose those elements of the current system for decades, I’m happy they’re basically outing themselves and they should keep on doing it so that everybody sees them for what they really are and who they really serve,
That’s it, I’m founding my own LLC so I can be a CEO
And now the rich get their own military for use against the citizens
They’ve always had it.
