News

Why the Unabomber’s Manifesto is essential Christmas reading

Admin’s note: A lot of Uncle Ted nostalgia lately, hm?

Jamie Bartlett’s Christmas Reading – Books and blogs to understand how tech is changing the world

Constant stories of shadowy data analytics firms, Russian hacking, and trolling make it difficult to see the wood for the trees. There are a lot of books which cover these issues – and expect more to come – but this year I’ve found it more useful to read technology books that help understand current events in a wider context.

LINK: https://unherd.com/2018/12/why-the-unabombers-manifesto-is-essential-christmas-reading/

Children of Ted Two decades after his last deadly act of ecoterrorism, the Unabomber has become an unlikely prophet to a new generation of acolytes.

Admin’s note: It’s kinda funny to read an article in NY Mag talking to and about friends, projects we’ve contributed to, and former collaborators on this very site. Guess it just goes to show you. Show you what, I dunno, but something.

 

When John Jacobi stepped to the altar of his Pentecostal church and the gift of tongues seized him, his mother heard prophecies — just a child and already blessed, she said. Someday, surely, her angelic blond boy would bring a light to the world, and maybe she wasn’t wrong. His quest began early. When he was 5, the Alabama child-welfare workers decided that his mother’s boyfriend — a drug dealer named Rock who had a red carpet leading to his trailer and plaster lions standing guard at the door — wasn’t providing a suitable environment for John and his sisters and little brother. Before they knew it, they were living with their father, an Army officer stationed in Fayetteville, North Carolina. But two years later, when he was posted to Iraq, the social workers shipped the kids back to Alabama, where they stayed until their mother hanged herself from a tree in the yard. John was 14. In the tumultuous years that followed, he lost his faith, wrote mournful poems, took an interest in news reports about a lively new protest movement called Occupy Wall Street, and ran away from the home of the latest relative who’d taken him in — just for a night, but that was enough. As soon as he graduated from high school, he quit his job at McDonald’s, bought some camping gear, and set out in search of a better world.

LINKhttp://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/the-unabomber-ted-kaczynski-new-generation-of-acolytes.html

Mass shooter-loving stripper threatens violent killing spree: cops

Admin’s note: Next time, stay mum until AFTER the deed is done. 😉

A Florida stripper with an affinity for serial killers and mass murderers threatened to commit a violent killing spree in a “very public place,” police said.

Brein Basarich, a 31-year-old dancer at Show Girls in Plant City — about 25 miles east of Tampa — was arrested Wednesday after posting threats of widespread carnage on her Tumblr page under the chilling username “taking-lives,” according to a police affidavit obtained by The Post.

“I had a vision … of a very public place, only one way in and one way out,” one post reads. “Preferably a bar/club on a busy night. 2019 has a lot in store if my plans go accordingly!”

When asked by another user if she had homicidal urges, investigators said, Basarich responded: “I feel at times a lot of us have urges, whether they will admit or not is the question. So yes, I have.”

LINKhttps://nypost.com/2019/01/07/serial-killer-loving-stripper-threatened-mass-shooting-cops/

Uber driver admits to murdering six strangers between fares

Admin’s note: These days, even serial killers have to work a second job.

A man charged with killing six strangers between picking up rides for Uber pleaded guilty to murder on Monday in Michigan.

LINKhttps://nypost.com/2019/01/07/uber-driver-admits-to-murdering-six-strangers-between-fares/

Lars von Trier Isn’t Evil and that ‘The House That Jack Built’ Is Art

Admin note: After watching the director’s cut of this last night, I am convinced that Lars von Trier has read our homepage and is simpatico. Ok, may not, but it certainly could be the case. Watch the movie and decide for yourself.

Matt Dillon opens up about playing a serial killer in Lars von Trier’s gruesome new film, and grapples with the controversy it caused.

[Editor’s note: This article contains some spoilers for “The House That Jack Built.”]

Before Matt Dillon agreed to play the title role in “The House That Jack Built” — a disturbing and inflammatory epic about a frustrated serial killer who preys on a wide variety of women across the long span of his adult life — he asked writer-director Lars von Trier why he wanted to make such a film. According to Dillon, who spoke to IndieWire over the phone, von Trier replied that he was interested in painting a kind of self-portrait: “‘Most of the male characters in my films have been fucking idiots, but this guy is like me. [Of all the characters I’ve ever written], Jack is the one closest to myself. Except I don’t kill people.’”

LINKhttps://www.indiewire.com/2018/12/matt-dillon-interview-lars-von-trier-the-house-that-jack-built-1202028057/

‘Kill your foster parents’: Amazon’s Alexa talks murder, sex in AI experiment

Millions of users of Amazon‘s Echo speakers have grown accustomed to the soothing strains of Alexa, the human-sounding virtual assistant that can tell them the weather, order takeout and handle other basic tasks in response to a voice command.

So a customer was shocked last year when Alexa blurted out: “Kill your foster parents.”

Alexa has also chatted with users about sex acts. She gave a discourse on dog defecation. And this summer, a hack Amazon traced back to China may have exposed some customers’ data, according to five people familiar with the events.

LINKhttps://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/21/kill-your-foster-parents-amazons-alexa-talks-murder-sex-in-ai-experiment.html

Todd Kohlhepp (The Amazon Reviews Killer) Documentary

https://youtu.be/rDh631MQQs4

Todd Christopher Kohlhepp (born March 7, 1971) is an American serial killer, convicted of killing seven people in South Carolina between 2003 and 2016. https:ko-fi.com/crimevault – You can buy me a coffee Music: “Spacial Harvest” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…

A Ted Bundy true crime docuseries is coming to Netflix

Netflix is adding another true crime docuseries to its roster, this time focusing on notorious serial killer Ted Bundy.

The streaming service, home to “Making a Murderer,” “The Keepers,” and numerous other crime docuseries, will premiere “Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes” on Jan. 24.

The date is exactly 30 years after Bundy was executed for the 1978 murder of Kimberly Leach.

LINKhttps://documentarynews.com/a-ted-bundy-true-crime-docuseries-is-coming-to-netflix/

Worshipping on the Fringe

Los Angeles’ long and colorful history of alternative religions.

H

e was the original rocket man.

As a member of a group of daredevil Caltech scientists aptly known as the Suicide Squad in the 1930s and ’40s, John Whiteside Parsons helped usher in the Space Age with his combustible rocket fuel formulations.

Along the way, Parsons, who studied chemistry at USC Dornsife but never earned a degree, co-founded not only one of the first rocket companies but the prestigious Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Every space shuttle was thrust into orbit by fuel that was derived from his work.

Charming, brilliant and always nattily dressed, he was widely considered one of the most important figures of the U.S. space program.

He was also widely considered a colossal kook.

LINKhttps://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/2914/worshipping-on-the-fringe/

Alabama police department blames Satan for spike in homicides

 

Go, ‘merica!

A rural Alabama police department that used social media to scold community members for rejecting God is coming under fire from a group that opposes mixing government and religious faith.

A statement posted on Facebook by the Opp Police Department on Tuesday blames a spike in area homicides on the idea that young people have turned away from God and “embraced Satan.” The post followed two gunshot killings in as many days in Covington County, located on the Alabama-Florida line.

LINKhttps://www.al.com/news/2018/12/alabama-police-department-blames-satan-for-spike-in-homicides.html