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Why did you make like light of Michael Hasting's death then denigrate Barrett Brown[0] after irrelevantly bringing up Monsanto and Nickelback[1] in that thread

Why did you make like light of Michael Hasting's death then denigrate Barrett Brown[0] after irrelevantly bringing up Monsanto and Nickelback[1] in that thread 36 days ago instead of discussing the topic (or not engaging) like a reasonable person? You could of had the advantage of people not knowing more about this type of work enlisted by governments/carried out by for-profit concerns, instead you choose to be highly corrosive in an attempt to elicit some reaction. But by golly here you are again doing the same. So while your attention is clearly engaged upon me, could you answer the question above? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7084938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7084938 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7082094 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7082094

tptacek 13y ago
Because Michael Hastings was killed for his unpublished work on chemtrails, not the reporting he'd done on CIA, and Barrett Brown is no hero: he's out to immanentize the eschaton! Hail Eris! If you're going to write a conspiracy theory for us, "streetnigga", at least do it with some style. Throw an "Ewige Blumenkraft" or two in there.
- rdl 13y ago
  How many drinks have you had this evening?
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Zero, but thanks for putting the idea in my head. :) I have a very hard time taking people who believe in the Michael Hastings conspiracy seriously, and that's just one of the goofy conspiracy theories the parent commenter has promoted on HN.
    - rdl 13y ago
      Happy to help. This is Free Liquor Week (aka RSA), but you're probably wise enough to avoid it. I agree the most likely situation with Hastings was he had personal issues, but maybe got spooked by someone calling him or otherwise being threatening, and crashed his car. After writing some pretty good articles. And Barrett Brown has some serious issues as well, although (like aaronsw and weev, and manning's pre-trial detention conditions) the way the legal system is being used is itself unconscionable. I still think "punch up" applies.
      - tptacek 13y ago
        I would rather eat a live wriggling cockroach than attend RSA or, for that matter, be in the same city as RSA. I don't understand where you're even coming from regarding Hastings. He had a history of abusing drugs and alcohol. His car crashed. A bunch of Internet conspiracy theorists decided that crashed cars don't burst into flames the way video showed Hastings car had, even as other Internet people, including (here on HN) an EMT, pointed out that they actually do exactly that surprisingly often; some even presented videos. The LA Coroner released a report that pointed out Hastings had amphetamines and cannabis in his system when his car crashed. From where, exactly, do you get the notion that he received a threatening phone call? Is there any evidence anywhere at all that that ever happened, or does it just make for a good story?
        rdl 13y ago
        I just meant he might have been driving even worse than usual due to (founded or unfounded paranoia). Or meth. Or both. (I recall reading somewhere that he was convinced someone was monitoring him. But I suspect occam's razor in this case was being used to cut up lines.)
        tptacek 13y ago
        Well played. Also: are you seriously telling me you haven't read Robert Anton Wilson? You seem like, I don't know, the type.
        rdl 13y ago
        I have, although not in the past ~10 years -- I think I read the Illuminatus trilogy in ~3 days at the MIT SFS library; I haven't read Schroedinger's Cat. I often get two of my favorite characters (Celine and Danneskjold) mixed up, though.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - mindslight 13y ago
      So, you've spent enough effort studying the details of the Michael Hastings case that you can actually conclude the conspiracy angle is so outlandish that it can even be used as a reliable indicator of a broken general reasoning process? That is a mighty strong claim, and I'm surprised that the quality of evidence is high enough to support it and that you were so interested in it. I haven't, and don't really have feelings on the case either way - it seems inactionable and thus uninteresting. But it seems to me that the reasonable uninvolved opinion should be to treat views on Michael Hastings's death as unindicative of much else at all.
      - chc 13y ago
        How much have you studied leprechauns? Do you feel qualified to comment on them? What would you think of me if I insisted that leprechauns were behind all the major world events of the last decade? There are lots of things we can't prove or disprove, and it's good to acknowledge that. But that doesn't make ideas based on huge logical leaps and not much evidence reasonable. It's possible (in the sense of not impossible) that leprechauns are real and do manipulate human history, but the reasons anyone would think so right now are so paltry that even if it did somehow turn out to be the case, the people who supported the theory right now would still not seem any more credible than a broken clock.
        mindslight 13y ago
        I would honestly be interested in the first 0.5-10 minutes of your leprechaun theory (depending on beer consumption, and if I'd heard similar things before), then I would try to change the subject and hope that there was more to you. And the same would apply if you were to go on a rant about how people who take joy in the idea of leprechauns are positively stupid. It's not that true/false are equally credible, it's that assertion of either one starts off utterly non-credible. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and all that. This applies to proving the existence of leprechauns. But it also applies to positively disproving the existence of (a specific definition of) leprechauns, especially with the goal of using that result to imply something else. Insisting the definitiveness of either take on a middleground is akin to rooting for sports teams (not that that isn't fun, but don't think you're helping spread truth).
    - streetnigga 13y ago
      You are the one that brought up his death as if it was a conspiracy[0] in response to my linking[1] of one Hasting's reports on spying[2]. No one asked you to believe in a conspiracy. You deflected from the original topic of spying with it, and continue to do so by stating I was the one that promoted it. Retract your outright fallacy. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7084938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7084938 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7083406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7083406 [2] http://www.buzzfeed.com/mhastings/why-democrats-love-to-spy-on-americans http://www.buzzfeed.com/mhastings/why-democrats-love-to-spy-...
  - a3n 13y ago
    Hey, cool! That's exactly the kind of behavior that GCHQ is bragging about to their partners. That's even better than Tang from the space program!
- EthanHeilman 13y ago
  I am torn between wanting to up vote this comment in honor of Wilson and other associated Popes and wanting to down vote it because it contributes nothing and distracts from the various crimes highlighted in the article. Have Karl Koch and a downvote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Koch_(hacker) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Koch_(hacker)

tptacek 13y ago

Because Michael Hastings was killed for his unpublished work on chemtrails, not the reporting he'd done on CIA, and Barrett Brown is no hero: he's out to immanentize the eschaton! Hail Eris! If you're going to write a conspiracy theory for us, "streetnigga", at least do it with some style. Throw an "Ewige Blumenkraft" or two in there.

rdl 13y ago
How many drinks have you had this evening?
- tptacek 13y ago
  Zero, but thanks for putting the idea in my head. :) I have a very hard time taking people who believe in the Michael Hastings conspiracy seriously, and that's just one of the goofy conspiracy theories the parent commenter has promoted on HN.
  - rdl 13y ago
    Happy to help. This is Free Liquor Week (aka RSA), but you're probably wise enough to avoid it. I agree the most likely situation with Hastings was he had personal issues, but maybe got spooked by someone calling him or otherwise being threatening, and crashed his car. After writing some pretty good articles. And Barrett Brown has some serious issues as well, although (like aaronsw and weev, and manning's pre-trial detention conditions) the way the legal system is being used is itself unconscionable. I still think "punch up" applies.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      I would rather eat a live wriggling cockroach than attend RSA or, for that matter, be in the same city as RSA. I don't understand where you're even coming from regarding Hastings. He had a history of abusing drugs and alcohol. His car crashed. A bunch of Internet conspiracy theorists decided that crashed cars don't burst into flames the way video showed Hastings car had, even as other Internet people, including (here on HN) an EMT, pointed out that they actually do exactly that surprisingly often; some even presented videos. The LA Coroner released a report that pointed out Hastings had amphetamines and cannabis in his system when his car crashed. From where, exactly, do you get the notion that he received a threatening phone call? Is there any evidence anywhere at all that that ever happened, or does it just make for a good story?
      - rdl 13y ago
        I just meant he might have been driving even worse than usual due to (founded or unfounded paranoia). Or meth. Or both. (I recall reading somewhere that he was convinced someone was monitoring him. But I suspect occam's razor in this case was being used to cut up lines.)
        tptacek 13y ago
        Well played. Also: are you seriously telling me you haven't read Robert Anton Wilson? You seem like, I don't know, the type.
        rdl 13y ago
        I have, although not in the past ~10 years -- I think I read the Illuminatus trilogy in ~3 days at the MIT SFS library; I haven't read Schroedinger's Cat. I often get two of my favorite characters (Celine and Danneskjold) mixed up, though.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - mindslight 13y ago
    So, you've spent enough effort studying the details of the Michael Hastings case that you can actually conclude the conspiracy angle is so outlandish that it can even be used as a reliable indicator of a broken general reasoning process? That is a mighty strong claim, and I'm surprised that the quality of evidence is high enough to support it and that you were so interested in it. I haven't, and don't really have feelings on the case either way - it seems inactionable and thus uninteresting. But it seems to me that the reasonable uninvolved opinion should be to treat views on Michael Hastings's death as unindicative of much else at all.
    - chc 13y ago
      How much have you studied leprechauns? Do you feel qualified to comment on them? What would you think of me if I insisted that leprechauns were behind all the major world events of the last decade? There are lots of things we can't prove or disprove, and it's good to acknowledge that. But that doesn't make ideas based on huge logical leaps and not much evidence reasonable. It's possible (in the sense of not impossible) that leprechauns are real and do manipulate human history, but the reasons anyone would think so right now are so paltry that even if it did somehow turn out to be the case, the people who supported the theory right now would still not seem any more credible than a broken clock.
      - mindslight 13y ago
        I would honestly be interested in the first 0.5-10 minutes of your leprechaun theory (depending on beer consumption, and if I'd heard similar things before), then I would try to change the subject and hope that there was more to you. And the same would apply if you were to go on a rant about how people who take joy in the idea of leprechauns are positively stupid. It's not that true/false are equally credible, it's that assertion of either one starts off utterly non-credible. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and all that. This applies to proving the existence of leprechauns. But it also applies to positively disproving the existence of (a specific definition of) leprechauns, especially with the goal of using that result to imply something else. Insisting the definitiveness of either take on a middleground is akin to rooting for sports teams (not that that isn't fun, but don't think you're helping spread truth).
  - streetnigga 13y ago
    You are the one that brought up his death as if it was a conspiracy[0] in response to my linking[1] of one Hasting's reports on spying[2]. No one asked you to believe in a conspiracy. You deflected from the original topic of spying with it, and continue to do so by stating I was the one that promoted it. Retract your outright fallacy. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7084938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7084938 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7083406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7083406 [2] http://www.buzzfeed.com/mhastings/why-democrats-love-to-spy-on-americans http://www.buzzfeed.com/mhastings/why-democrats-love-to-spy-...
- a3n 13y ago
  Hey, cool! That's exactly the kind of behavior that GCHQ is bragging about to their partners. That's even better than Tang from the space program!
EthanHeilman 13y ago
I am torn between wanting to up vote this comment in honor of Wilson and other associated Popes and wanting to down vote it because it contributes nothing and distracts from the various crimes highlighted in the article. Have Karl Koch and a downvote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Koch_(hacker) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Koch_(hacker)