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You're clearly missing the point, if you've read so many of my comments then you've seen my point about the raspberry pi... The point is laypeople don't know w

You're clearly missing the point, if you've read so many of my comments then you've seen my point about the raspberry pi... The point is laypeople don't know what bombs or basic electronics look like. And why should they when there are pictures of TV shows using CPU coolers to represent bombs and computer power supplies to represent hard drives? > Anyone who actually takes a look at the photos of what the "clock" looks like will immediately think it looks like a bomb Kind of makes my point. You realize the thing was in a pencil box, not some full size briefcase? The most common image used: https://media.shellypalmer.com/wp-content/images/2015/09/ahmedmohamedcomposit-compressor.png https://media.shellypalmer.com/wp-content/images/2015/09/ahm... doesn't actually convey the actual scale of it, the thing was barely larger than the original alarm and maybe an inch thick. If you found this in a train unattended it'd be one thing, but the student says it's an alarm clock, anyone with a modicum of electronics knowledge would immediately look at it and say "yes that's an alarm clock". Which is exactly what both teachers did. No one ever thought it was an actual bomb, the confusion was the intent behind it since Texas has a law about hoax bombs that treats them seriously based on intent not just appearance. - And more generally I bring it up because it should show, laypeople are easy to convince of guilt if your standards are literally adding "allegedly" to every claim. People in general are vastly overestimate their own reliability and underestimate their suggestibility. It takes a few weasel words to fool people into creating alternate realities so far and away from reality they almost seem absurd compared to the truth, yet they're absolutely convicted about them.

salamimonger 6y ago
See, here's the thing. If I make comments implicitly about going to shoot up the neighborhood school, even though I didn't do it yet, do you presume me innocent and leave me alone? No, it's going to be investigated and I'll likely get a nice greeting from some men in black soon after. This wasn't some genius, novel clock that kid invented. He put the internals of a clock into a very specific kind of pencil case to bring around school to show people until it was confiscated by a teacher due to the very fact that it looked like a bomb. So don't tell me that no one thought it was an actual bomb. That doesn't matter. It's not the best example for what you want to say about presumption of innocence - which I agree with you on by the way.
- BoorishBears 6y ago
  > If I make comments implicitly about going to shoot up the neighborhood school, even though I didn't do it yet, do you presume me innocent and leave me alone? If you don't make those comments to me, and a news story is making the call that your comments were about shooting up a school, I'll presume you're innocent. That's literally what this is about. You're not an investigator, you're not sitting on the case files for every story you see. No one is expecting you to have the same standards as a court for what guilty is, but you should still internalize some concept of innocent until proven guilty Because the news can, and will, and does paint people as criminals when they did nothing wrong. Now a days literally all it takes is saying "so and so person was arrested for allegedly committing so and so crime". That's it. People don't need any more proof than that, and the fact that this entire conversation is happening when the investigation into the materials was almost 2 months ago by an NYPD Counterterrorism unit and the FBI, yet this guy is still walking around is pretty damn strong evidence that nothing more came of it, should be proof. Tour standard of guilty should be much more than a simple news story. A news story mentioning saltpeter and prepper books is nothing. The kind of people who experiment with saltpeter are exactly the kinds of people to read those books out of interest, not some sort of malicious plan to commit crimes. - Also this is an aside but... > So don't tell me that no one thought it was an actual bomb. That doesn't matter. That's literally the crux of the matter. That's literally all that matters. That no one thought it was an actual bomb, and he didn't act like it was an actual bomb. If both teachers immediately realized it wasn't a bomb, how are you claiming it looked like a bomb? It didn't look like a bomb. It looked like an electronic thing splayed out, they asked what it was, he said alarm clock. The second teacher knew it didn't look like a bomb, what happened is they presumed that he was trying to make it appear like a bomb. No one thought it was a bomb because it didn't look like one.
  - salamimonger 6y ago
    I'm not claiming anything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Mohamed_clock_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Mohamed_clock_incident >His English teacher thought the device resembled a bomb, confiscated it, and reported him to the school's principal. The local police were called, and they questioned him for an hour and a half.

salamimonger 6y ago

See, here's the thing. If I make comments implicitly about going to shoot up the neighborhood school, even though I didn't do it yet, do you presume me innocent and leave me alone? No, it's going to be investigated and I'll likely get a nice greeting from some men in black soon after. This wasn't some genius, novel clock that kid invented. He put the internals of a clock into a very specific kind of pencil case to bring around school to show people until it was confiscated by a teacher due to the very fact that it looked like a bomb. So don't tell me that no one thought it was an actual bomb. That doesn't matter. It's not the best example for what you want to say about presumption of innocence - which I agree with you on by the way.

BoorishBears 6y ago
> If I make comments implicitly about going to shoot up the neighborhood school, even though I didn't do it yet, do you presume me innocent and leave me alone? If you don't make those comments to me, and a news story is making the call that your comments were about shooting up a school, I'll presume you're innocent. That's literally what this is about. You're not an investigator, you're not sitting on the case files for every story you see. No one is expecting you to have the same standards as a court for what guilty is, but you should still internalize some concept of innocent until proven guilty Because the news can, and will, and does paint people as criminals when they did nothing wrong. Now a days literally all it takes is saying "so and so person was arrested for allegedly committing so and so crime". That's it. People don't need any more proof than that, and the fact that this entire conversation is happening when the investigation into the materials was almost 2 months ago by an NYPD Counterterrorism unit and the FBI, yet this guy is still walking around is pretty damn strong evidence that nothing more came of it, should be proof. Tour standard of guilty should be much more than a simple news story. A news story mentioning saltpeter and prepper books is nothing. The kind of people who experiment with saltpeter are exactly the kinds of people to read those books out of interest, not some sort of malicious plan to commit crimes. - Also this is an aside but... > So don't tell me that no one thought it was an actual bomb. That doesn't matter. That's literally the crux of the matter. That's literally all that matters. That no one thought it was an actual bomb, and he didn't act like it was an actual bomb. If both teachers immediately realized it wasn't a bomb, how are you claiming it looked like a bomb? It didn't look like a bomb. It looked like an electronic thing splayed out, they asked what it was, he said alarm clock. The second teacher knew it didn't look like a bomb, what happened is they presumed that he was trying to make it appear like a bomb. No one thought it was a bomb because it didn't look like one.
- salamimonger 6y ago
  I'm not claiming anything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Mohamed_clock_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Mohamed_clock_incident >His English teacher thought the device resembled a bomb, confiscated it, and reported him to the school's principal. The local police were called, and they questioned him for an hour and a half.