news by twitter

[caesar novus]

I followed a couple of TV networks during today's San Bernadino mass killings in California, and what a waste of time compared to what I then found on twitter. The media and police spokes(wo)man just self censored for hour after hour. They were also very incompetant by misreading what was happening onscreen... I could hardly stand it.

 

On twitter - once you found the best search terms, which is hard - it all was too clear. You could find transcripts of police radios with clear early grasp of the situation, which TV bozos probably knew based on their failed fishing attempts to get a live cop to say it instead. You could see helicopter photos showing all... now you realize the TV version was selectively smudged out (they admitted it was on delay for censoring purposes).

 

Twitter pointed you to various amateur videos, including right next to the final shootout with bangs and all (why don't folks turn their phone horizontal for landscape recording?). They had tweets by coworkers of the suspects, who dumped (confidential?) parts of their job record and infractions and recent travel history. Sure there was some mixed up info by ideologues, but about the only professional news web page that comparably broke realtime facts was "Times of India".

 

I'm really disappointed by the major media, from TV networks to the Bing or Google news sites... maybe they are afraid of lawsuits. Have to sometimes get your hands dirty with raw twitter for breaking news (even has good ancient Rome tweets as well).

[Viggen]

Yup, main stream media is not really what it once was, Twitter is much more "real", "live" and "raw"

btw. whats up with the urge of US americans to shoot at each other with assault rifles??

[caesar novus]

Yup, main stream media is not really what it once was, Twitter is much more "real", "live" and "raw" btw.

I can understand that major media has to confirm sources and beware of slander, but it must also be timid due to that diminished role. Even the slightly right-biased network waited a day to make this more than a (half valid?!) workplace grievance type of thing, in spite of early evidence of jihadist statements, and neighbors admitting fear of reporting apparent all hours suburban bomb factory due to appearing racist. After several incompetent acts by media folks, next time I will publicly tweet them realtime about it... I forgot their names this time around.

 

Twitter, once you bump it out of top story or whatever to the live mode, had surprisingly few bad leads. When a false name was widely tweeted for the female shooter, there were a lot of jeering tweets from the mideast that it was an impossible or joke name. There were various probable invasions of privacy of the shooters that sounded like state administration folks were dumping secret data, and I liked that even though they could have done it for an innocent person like me. The police radio transcripts were great, but I think info could have led to them being shot if the shooters had access to them... also can hinder prosecution for reasons too complex to spit out there.

 

whats up with the urge of US americans to shoot at each other

The URGE may be understandable and psychologically healthy. The US, more than Europe or other anglo countries, has a noticeable subset that is so flamboyantly mischievous that any sane person might feel urges. Although mass public killings are up maybe due to publicity and copycat, average gun violence is way DOWN the last 20 years... as is all violent crime. According to The Washington Post, gun killings are down by half and gun woundings are down more by 3/4: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/03/weve-had-a-massive-decline-in-gun-violence-in-the-united-states-heres-why/

 

with assault rifles??

Assault weapon sales in California are banned, and the guns in recent event were legal non-assault. Assault is a misused term, often applied for sinister appearance rather than functionality. I guess the large reloadable clips are worst thing... certainly it is rare to hear of automatic (as opposed to semi-auto) capability. Semi auto by itself is not the sinister thing often bandied about by the press; many criminals would have fared better using old fashioned revolvers.

 

Assault rifles use downsized cartridges vs. regular rifles which is the opposite of sinister.  I can't comprehend the apparent swing of hunters to using semi auto AR-15 rifles. Their cartridge is wimpy enough to be banned in several states for deer hunting as a wounder rather than killer. I guess these guys are role-playing or used to their service weapon, but it's an old fashion design anyway - I would much prefer the short, efficient bullpup assault designs that followed on from europe.

Edited December 5, 2015 by caesar novus

[Viggen]

...for the average European, this is one hell of a scary picture, some of you guys are nuts, seriously lol (shes in Congress)

[caesar novus]

(shes in Congress)

I had to edit this in after later fact checking: She has only been an assemblywomen representing part or all of Las Vegas to Nevada. She tried to run for US congress, but was voted out early within the repub. primary.  A New York City transplant, her goal according to wiki is to arm female students against male predators.

 

some of you guys are nuts, seriously lol

Us guys? I have never noticed any non-cop carrying a gun, except a hunter wearing fluorescent orange (usually looking harmlessly half asleep and just getting away from the spouse). I think what you see is a theatrical statement to protest local courts letting killers out to kill again and again... sort of proclaiming if they can't protect us we have to do it ourselves. Granted, the news does claim skyrocketing gun sales, but:

 

In my state there is near zero (legal) gun ownership and gun murders. Wiki sez we have only 183 handgun carry licenses out for well over a million residents - basically just ex cops who fear revenge from their perps getting out of jail. Otherwise it is near impossible to transport even an unloaded permitted gun, and you need psych and med tests as well as a gun course for permit. Well, now we have a ton of white collar enforcement bureaucrats who can carry service pistols and have shot people when drunk. There must have been several in the 9/11 airliners who didn't act because they expected a landing somewhere.

 

It's very interesting to see a Wiki table of gun ownership and crime by state; you can click the columns to sort the drastic differences for year 2010: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States_by_state . Urban Washington DC is quite an outlier with virtually no (legal) guns and a war-zone gun death rate. I grew up in the cluster of rural states with gun ownership exceeding 40% and negligible gun murders (like 2 for the state, or less than 1 per 100k pop per year). Typically these are unused hunting guns inherited from old timers.

 

I briefly lived in Texas which seems to be statistically in the middle. Lower gun ownership unless you add the illegal ones. Probably intended against people more than animals... the higher crime rate in that big state leads to a lot of scary crime stories in the news. They started issuing concealed gun permits when I was there with almost nobody turned down - a farce. California has strict gun laws and less ownership but worse gun crime. The worst gun crime is in sort of poor and poorly managed S.E. states.

Edited December 6, 2015 by caesar novus