This just in: 

Yes, I know. It’s a lot to unpack.

How many of those incidents were shoe-related, or involved insulted Barbie dolls, is unclear.

According to the Kleine Zeitung, the unnamed perpetrator, aged sixty and dubbed Franz, attacked his 81-year-old carer, punching him repeatedly and,

When subsequently appearing in court, Franz decided against wearing heels, perhaps wisely, and opted instead for “a chic sweater” and “delicate sandals.”

Franz, since you ask, was diagnosed with “a severe personality disorder” and a tendency towards violence, but was considered “still sane.”

The defendant also claimed that his fit of violent rage had been “provoked” by arguments over expenses, and his elderly carer’s failure to bring him toy cars, or any gifts for his small, plastic girlfriend.

Modernity, dear readers. It’s an acquired taste.

Previously in the world of transgender shoe-related crime.

Lifted from the comments, an excerpt from the Joe Rogan Experience, a discussion with investor and tech developer Marc Andreessen:

Forward this video to friends & family to understand just how evil the government has been
pic.twitter.com/XgRnikMK6J

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 29, 2024

The complete three-hour discussion, which I recommend making time for, can be found here. Topics touched on include progressive status bubbles, biased AI, debanking and other deep-state shenanigans, and a march towards dystopia only recently interrupted.

Update, via the comments:

As Dicentra says in reply,

It’s quite a revealing discussion, on many fronts, and worth finding three hours to hear the whole thing.

Much of it is dystopian in its implications, and there’s a recurring sense of getting a chance to avoid a path to nowhere good. The idea of a branch in the timeline, mentioned jokingly early on, did not strike me as inapt. And the description of living in a self-flattering progressive bubble, with continual anxieties about status and expressing The Correct Politics, may be familiar to regulars here.

I was in the car, listening distractedly and pretty much by accident, but soon found myself paying attention. The mechanics of unaccountable state power are not uninteresting, if somewhat disturbing; the sheer foolishness and perversity of Our Betters is a never-ending source of black comedy – say, with the US military using Chinese drones; and the insider description of elite liberals and their world – its vanities and its mismatch with reality – had a certain resonance.

As you might imagine.

Mr Rogan is known, and parodied, for his whoas and wows and what the fucks, but it’s an episode in which what the fuck is not an unreasonable response. And if you’ve wondered how an elite liberal, a Silicon Valley billionaire, starts to, as it were, leave the faith, it’s quite interesting. The process of registering the vanities and incongruities, the social dynamics, the outright lies about topics in which you have some expertise, and so forth.

Now please insert your political views into the scanner.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Suboptimal situation. || Suboptimal situation 2. || Skilled or lucky? || Grab that cloud. || A bedlamite scolds you for your lack of piety. || Choices were made, a thread. || Adventures in modernity. || Cigarette lighter versus molten glass. || Divine intervention. || This is one of these. || Career path. || Coping strategy. || “You can’t buy anything like it in the shops.” || Lily likes cooking and wants to feel “safe and celebrated.” || When you arrive at a crash scene. || On recidivism. || Stairway obstruction. || Performing CPR. || The progressive retail experience, parts 595, 596, 597, and 598. || Some precision required. || Pod people walk among us. || Nips or no nips? || She’s taking her reborns to a princess day. || Failing to reproduce. || Educated fleas do it. || A traffic light in the Gobi Desert.

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Lifted from the comments, it turns out that Transport For London is advertising assisted suicide. They seem to be giving it quite a push:

Westminster Death Tunnel sponsored by @dignityindying pic.twitter.com/fW0mbtqVRc

— Fleur Elizabeth (@fleurmeston) November 25, 2024

Very on-brand, I’d say. Almost too on-the-nose. I mean, if London’s buses and tube network were suddenly to be plastered with huge posters saying END IT ALL NOW, YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO, it wouldn’t be entirely inexplicable, or entirely dissonant with the customer experience.

It’s perhaps worth noting that Transport For London has a staff training centre, complete with fake station and platform, and “suicide pits,” where employees learn how to manage what are euphemistically referred to as “passengers taken unwell” or “disruptions to the tube service.” Events that occur on average once or twice a week.

In 2019, staff “intervened” in the self-destructive thoughts of 426 customers deemed “visibly in distress,” “up from 252 in the previous year.”

As EmC quips darkly in reply,

Update, via the comments:

The adverts for assisted suicide are now being partially covered, by persons unknown, with posters for a Samaritans helpline.

Consider this an open thread.

From Chicago, crime news:

No, really:

Happily, the hunch paid off:

The ways in which the criminal mind differs from your own have been noted here before.