This story has parallel construction written all over it.

It establishes how careful his behavior was during those three months. Obviously he was not famous for murder during that time, but it might lead us to believe that a person living on a post pandemic world and seeking to remain anonymous might have chosen a mask at Mc Ds? For that matter… why not on the sidewalk where the event happened?

I’m pretty cynical and I’m nowhere near this cynical.

Is your interest in this “the guy in custody is an imposter” theory is because we want so much for the actual act-doer to still be out there? I confess… I like that world. But a “hero” arising to assume the shooter’s identity feels even more fantastical than my original musing that covert agencies are trying to hide their existence by having a wage slave take credit for calling this in.

I only mentioned it because it was a detail you might not have heard?

So… someone who happens to look like the the person captured on the videos has the wherewithal to craft the manifesto and fabricate the 3D printed gun parts, and also wants to… do this so that he can become famous or gum up the machinery of justice? Seriously, I’m not tracking.

I heard he left zero digital traces. That would be hard for me even if I was trying.

I heard that he went into hiding months before the actual shooting.

It’s all fishy af.

There’s surely something more here than we are being told.

Indeed! Someone should get this opinion around in the news media.

And get the death penalty? What?

I would have worried had I been first.

Despite what the critics responding here say, I think there’s some smoke here if not a little fire.

It hasn’t been the same since Gygax. I played with the original pamphlets.

I didn’t return to mine until just this November.

Catch me up? What threats?

We need more posts from you. Please?

I love the Forza series — someone tell me enough about these to go and take advantage of major deals.

First — allow me to say how impressed I am by your keen thinking in all of your responses. I feel like my own engagement with the Fediverse, and Lemmy, is really casual compared with yours. I’ll be honest: I’m a tourist.

And like a tourist, I have always tried to focus on what’s good and ignore what’s bad, keeping myself safe from what’s dangerous. I don’t know anything about hexbear despite that I may have seen the word before.

The assignment has been a real eye opener.

I simply presumed my students would be curious. Then interested. Then engaged.

I predicted wrong. They felt irritated in the main and never inspired. More will be revealed still but I fear that this round might end in a wash.

They do not find the primitive charming as I do. And they do not relish the brief freedom from being surveilled by corporations. And they do not thrill to the idea of participating in genuine acts of resistance against the totalitarian dictatorship of corporate hegemony.

I’m left but nowhere near “red.”

I like the capitalism of the renaissance for example — yes… things were awful, but there was motivation to be innovative and to work hard.

So… my disdain for universal surveillance is so thorough that I have an air gapped old Mac that I use to manage about a terabyte of data on my terabyte iPod classic. A Chinese refurb that was literally out of the box like new! In fact I think it is new — just a great copy— and I know for a fact that click wheel is not original. So I have worried there is some stealth blue tooth there or something but I doubt it.

Just saying that by way of articulating why I really want the Fediverse to become a thorn in the foot of the lion. Then I want it to be a land mine.

That’s probably the toxic stuff at hexbear? But seriously, I’d like to see the world taken back to tech level 1998. Keep Wikipedia and pretty much toss the rest. I’d like to see the Lemmyverse as is though — but with millions of users mindful of resources — like that video streaming article you sent — they were moving to spread the burden.

But honestly what I see corporate social media doing is using humans like the battery people in the Matrix — exploiting them in vats while giving them unreal hallucinations and zero truth.

Update on the class project. I asked students to report for week 7 about their adventures in the Fediverse.

Out of 23 students, not one genuinely grocks, as it were, the why.

Oh, they can give lip-service to the tropes we’ve been exploring in the SF class— privacy, autonomy, freedom, ethical uses of technology etc but none of them have become inspired, or even curious by these alternative platforms.

I believe it was you who wanted me about this attempt. Perhaps you were right. Not because they’d encounter vile things, which they do but do not blame me for, but because … I have dragged them out of the cave too fast? It’s too jarring for them? Too cumbersome. Requires too much.

The simplest features you and I take for granted in dealing with the mechanics of a Federated platform are simply too challenging and disheartening for these college students.

It’s like the corporations won in a single generation — as they anticipated.