St. Patrick’s Day in America has always been more of a celebration of Irish-American immigrant culture than it is of Ireland itself.

When the discourse goes in circles and gets nowhere, it becomes a perceived waste to continue it. The people who profit from gun sales – including the politicians who reap campaign contributions from exploiting misconceptions about it – like it this way.

He didn’t exactly need accuracy when there was a sea of targets in front of him, especially if his objective was to hit as many of them as possible before they could disperse.

But it also does raise the question: why did the shooter think he needed a lot of guns?

Be as detailed as possible in your report, and focus especially on any specific threats against individuals or groups that he has mentioned.

People have been studying the psychology of mass killers since the 70s. Without an actual living subject at hand in this case, it’s hard to do anything more than speculate. I tend to agree that it would be useful to know more about what pushed him to such an act, but how do you suggest going about this? Should we round up and interrogate everyone he knew in his life? Would that even be productive?

Motive isn’t as mysterious as we like to pretend it is. All it really required was a loss of fundamental empathy for his fellow humans. We see that everywhere these days. He’s not unique in that respect. What’s unique is the lengths he went to to commit this act. He seemed to want the spectacle of it. Like many serial killers, perhaps the idea of murder gave him a rush of feeling he couldn’t find anywhere else in his life, and so he figured why not get as much of that as he could?

Again, it’s all speculation. And it’s also not hard to trace it back to a sickness eating at the roots of our society. What do you do with that knowledge? What can any of us do but try a little harder in our own lives to be kind to others and generous to those who might be quietly slipping down into the lake of poison seething under the world?

I mean you can discuss it to death, but without facts – which don’t exist, because he didn’t tell anyone the intimate workings of his fucked up mind – the best you can do is speculate. By all means, go ahead.

But but but why did he spray bullets at a crowd with intent to murder hundreds? Why, man, why? We need his manifesto, his tax records, the political affiliations of his associates and family! How else am I supposed to fit him into my narrative if I can’t prove why he thought to do the unthinkable?

/s

Even if they could, I don’t know why you would jump to that idea when the guy fucking shot 400 people. He clearly wasn’t right in the head. He also had a history of heavy gambling and drinking. I don’t smell conspiracy on this one. This was just a mentally unwell guy who made a decision to murder; it is, unfortunately, a quintessentially American story that keeps repeating.

Those gun bans weren’t passed until 2023, which really puts the lie to the assertion that we stopped talking about it.

Maybe it’s more accurate to say we ran out of new things to say about it, and that’s why it’s not front and center in the news at this current moment. It’s also a hugely divisive issue and nobody seems to have a solution to the problem that doesn’t just piss off a bunch of other people, so in an election year it’s the last thing policy makers want to bring up.

Okay, sure, but voting on a single issue is what fucking morons do.

Sounds to me like those are shitty safety limits then. Fix your nuke plants, Japan. You’d think this would be a priority after the last time.

Incremental change is often the best we can hope for in this world.

That’s there because of analog clocks, which somebody in history decided would look too cluttered if they counted all 24 hrs, and at any rate we’re asleep for roughly a third of them anyway, so it’s superfluous. The 12-hr clock is an elegant design solution.

If you asked my wife, the answer would be that you use them for a day or two tops, but the important part is that you throw them in the hamper wet, and then make sure to put other clothes and stuff on top of them so they sit there damp and mouldering until laundry day comes around.

Our towel bar is directly above the heating grate, so towels, properly hung, will dry fairly quickly there. Considering that towels are typically only used to dry you once you’ve just thoroughly cleaned yourself, they won’t smell like much of anything but maybe soap and shampoo for many days of use, assuming they are able to dry out. But apparently it’s more of a priority that they get put in the laundry basket immediately, moisture be damned. I gave up trying to fight that fight long ago.

Christian conservatives will always prefer fiction over reality.

Just in time for the holiday baking and candy sales season. How convenient.

This is the new norm. Summer in the southern hemisphere = Australia burns. Summer in the north = Canada and the US burns. Give it a couple years and expect that list of countries on fire every year to expand rapidly.

I figure the only reason you don’t hear about this happening across Europe is they destroyed their forests centuries ago.

I want to be buried in a staged scene with a broken coffin lid and posed as if I’m clambering up through the dirt.

The headline is somewhat ambiguous, and seems to imply that the child was chained there to prevent a vampire buried below from rising. Knowing the child was the supposed vampire makes this a little less grim, because I was picturing some poor kid with his leg shackled to a headstone and left to die.