It was a violent, horrifying weekend. A mass shooting at Brown University during a study session in the school’s engineering and physics building left two people dead and nine injured. The university was locked down for 12 hours, with students crouched under desks and inside locked classrooms. As of this morning, the shooter is still at large. Police had arrested a person of interest over the weekend, but they released them on Sunday, saying that evidence pointed in a “different direction.” The university cancelled classes and exams for the rest of the semester, and encouraged students to go home.
Halfway around the world in Sydney, a father and son opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach, killing at least 15 people. The youngest victim was a 10-year-old girl named Matilda. Mass shootings are extremely rare in Australia because the country has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, but the Australian prime minister has pledged to tighten their gun laws even more after this shooting. Sure beats thoughts and prayers.
In Los Angeles, director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer, were stabbed and killed in their home on Sunday. Police haven’t formally announced an arrest, but the New York Times says that the couple’s son Nick Reiner has been arrested and is being held on $4 million bail.
You know Reiner’s work because it’s simply some of the best. As a director, you can thank him for A Few Good Men, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally…, and This Is Spinal Tap, just to name a few. His production company, Castle Rock, took a chance on a show called The Seinfeld Chronicles, even though it tested terribly, and now we’ll always have Seinfeld. He met Michele while he was working on When Harry Met Sally…, and falling in love with her quite literally changed the film. She’s the reason Harry and Sally get together in the end.
My Favorite Rob Reiner Fact: The “I’ll have what she’s having” line from When Harry Met Sally… was delivered by Reiner’s mother.
Dick Van Dyke turned 100 over the weekend. The Dick Van Dyke Show was created by Rob Reiner’s dad, Carl Reiner. Van Dyke, Reiner, and Mel Brooks were constant collaborators and friends. In honor of Van Dyke’s birthday, Here and Now’s Robin Young was supposed to interview him at his home, but when she got there, he was under the weather. So instead, she interviewed the 99-year-old Mel Brooks about the legendary entertainer. When asked what Van Dyke’s secret to longevity is, Brooks told her: “I don’t know, because the angel of death said, ‘Ah, let’s give this guy a break. He’s such a sweetheart.’” As for him? “Well, I hide. I’m never in one place for very long because I’m not looking for this guy to catch up with me.”
Trump blamed Reiner’s death on “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” which even his supporters found disgusting.
Weather: After a brief break, the rain is back. The flooding isn’t expected to be as catastrophic as last week’s, but it’s a one-two punch that our region never needed. Over the weekend, Auburn city officials issued a “get out now” evacuation order. Farms throughout Snohomish and Skagit Counties are underwater. The Nooksack River swept away an entire two-story home. Christmas was cancelled in Leavenworth. Even Trump had to acknowledge that this is an emergency.
Fuck Cars: A 38-year-old cyclist was hit by a car and killed on Sunday. The driver took off, and there’s no public description of the car yet, but the police are asking for tips if you’ve got them.
A Headline to Make You Smile: “Donald Trump wax figure removed from museum after being repeatedly punched in the face.”
Fresh Hell: TSA has been providing names of all air travelers to ICE to help them intercept immigrants while they’re in the airport. The program has been active since March, but hadn’t been known to the public until now. It’s not clear how many arrests have been made thanks to this collab from hell, but one former ICE official told the New York Times that in their region, if a name was flagged in a TSA list, it led to an arrest 75 percent of the time.
Murray Takes on AI: US Senator Patty Murray plans to introduce legislation Monday that would halt the six-state federal pilot program adding AI reviews to Medicare approvals. Until now, our state’s Medicaid recipients didn’t need prior authorization for most services. But under this program, on January 1, the robots will help determine whether or not patients qualify for services like pain management. Even better, the program sets up a financial incentive for the AI providers to deny approvals: they get a cut of the money they save the government.
The News Today Sucked: Here’s one more bit of love for Mr. Reiner.
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@48,
And yet the chemicals and know how to produce all of those things is still available. Gasoline is the most widely available.
Mass shooters plan for months or years. They legally acquire the means for their crime. A few more hoops isn’t going to stop them. They are intelligent. They are sane (99% of insanity defenses fail).
@48, How did those truck barriers that New Orleans Police erected perform. They dude drove around them and up the sidewalk. Absent that, he could have easily driven through the thin glass retail storefronts on the street corners (they aren’t structural) to pass onto the street beyond.
So you are for more money, on more performative measures, rather than measures that could work. Nearly all of these mass killers, kill out of grievance. They publicize what they do, days, hours, or minutes, ahead of time, usually on social media. So monitor that, as some FBI agents (under Obama) proposed. Then intervene with Extreme Risk Protection Orders to seize weapons and mental health holds.
“…but the Australian prime minister has pledged to tighten their gun laws even more after this shooting. Sure beats thoughts and prayers.”
Or, outfits like the Stranger could cool it with the overheated rhetoric on Gaza, already. From last February:
‘Antisemitic incidents have risen all over the world since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s military response in Gaza. But the attacks in Australia have hit a nerve in a country where Jews have long held prominent roles and where antisemitic incidents have been relatively rare. Australia’s most widely acclaimed World War I commander was Jewish. Thousands of Jews migrated to the country after the Holocaust, including Frank Lowy, who co-founded global mall giant Westfield.
‘Police helicopters now fly nightly over Sydney’s eastern suburbs, patrolling synagogues, Jewish businesses and even world-famous Bondi Beach.
‘“It’s next level stuff. It’s not kids doing something stupid on the spur of the moment,” said Menachem Vorchheimer, a Jewish human-rights advocate from Melbourne.’
(https://www.wsj.com/world/antisemitic-attacks-mar-australias-legacy-as-a-haven-for-jews-dacc96c0?mod=article_inline)
Frivolously throwing around serious terms like “genocide” emboldens anti-Jewish bigots everywhere, even in faraway, multi-cultural Australia. Endless one-sided rhetoric against Israel’s conduct in the war, but absolutely nothing said at all about Hamas’ intentional slaughter of civilians, feeds the bigots’ irrational hatred of Jews as a sinister Other, for whom violence can be the only path.
@51
tS’s Chief Israeli
Propagandist
cum AIPAC
Mouth-
piece:
“Or,
outfits
like the Stranger
could cool it with the
overheated rhetoric on Gaza”
The Wormtongue’s
Calls for the Stranger
to Censor itself! are No
Surprise — he’s been De-
manding It Ever Since 10/7
in fact, Any criticism of Israel and its actions
wormmy conflates with the worst kinds of
violent anti-Jewish bigotry
Conflating
Anti-genocide
with Anti-Semitism
each and every Time:
“… trying to stomp out criticism of
Israel’s genocidal atrocities.
using a tragic mass shooting
as a political cudgel against people
who believe Palestinians are human beings.
This is just one more cynical manipulation
aimed at protecting Israel from criticism
so that it can inflict more violence
and suffering upon the world.”
–Caitlin Johnstone
“Or,
outfits
like the Stranger
could cool it with the
overheated rhetoric on Gaza”
Don’t
Listen to
the Wormtongue
as painful
af as it may be
Pardon fucking bibi
and END the Genocide.
Point 1: Obviously
it is evil to massacre
civilians for being Jewish.
Point 2: Obviously
Israel’s genocidal atrocities
must continue to be opposed,
and will continue to be opposed.
Today
the worst people in
the world are trying to pretend
Point 1 and Point 2 are contradictory.
–Caitlin Johnstone; @caitoz.bsky.social
Who tF takes
their Advice from
‘the worst people in the world’?
Sorry,
Wormmy:
but You’re on the
Wrong Side of History here
@51 — “‘Antisemitic
incidents have risen all over the world
since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023
[killing 1.300], and Israel’s military response in Gaza [killing 60,000+] … “
huh.
This, from Caitlin’s Newsletter:
Australians Being Massacred Shouldn’t
Bother Us More Than Palestinians
Being Massacred
Indeed, the worst people on earth are using the Bondi Beach shooting to argue for crackdowns on free speech and freedom of assembly to silence Israel’s critics online and on the streets, in Australia and throughout the western world.
And when 15 Palestinians were killed
by Israel on March 16, the
west barely noticed.
I don’t remember the 15 Palestinians who died during that 24-hour period in mid-March, but I will always remember the Bondi Beach shooting. Someone could mention it to me thirty years from now and I’ll know exactly what they’re talking about.
My society {Australia] made an infinitely bigger deal about the deaths of 15 westerners in Sydney, Australia than the deaths of 15 Palestinians in Gaza, so it will always stick in my memory.
a tweet from Aaron Maté:
“15 civilians were killed in the massacre targeting Sydney’s Jewish community. A day in which Israel massacres 15 Palestinian civilians in Gaza would be at the low end of the average in 2+ years of genocide.
“Israel’s atrocities and the impunity they receive are undoubtedly the number one driver of anti-Semitism worldwide. And to show how little Israel and its apologists care about anti-Semitism, many are exploiting the Sydney massacre to justify Israel’s rejection of a Palestinian state; baselessly blame Iran; and demand more censorship of anti-genocide protests.”
If I had my slate cleaned and could see the world through fresh eyes it would never occur to me that I and my society would ever see 15 people being murdered in Australia as more significant than 15 people being murdered in Palestine. I would expect them to be viewed as exactly as terrible.
And they should be. Palestinians don’t love their families any less than Australians do. Australian lives aren’t any more significant or valuable than Palestinian lives. There is no valid reason for the world to have focused any less on the 15 people who were killed in Gaza on March 16 than on the 15 people who were murdered on Bondi Beach.
But it did.
@51 — “‘Antisemitic
incidents have risen all over the world
since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023
[killing 1.300], and Israel’s military response in Gaza [killing 60,000+] … “
“Israel’s atrocities
and the impunity they receive are
undoubtedly the number one driver of anti-Semitism worldwide.”
— Aaron Maté:
@51
“Frivolously throwing around serious terms like “genocide” emboldens anti-Jewish bigots everywhere, even in faraway, multi-cultural Australia. Endless one-sided rhetoric against Israel’s conduct in the war, but absolutely nothing said at all about Hamas’ intentional slaughter of civilians, feeds the bigots’ irrational hatred of Jews as a sinister Other, for whom violence can be the only path.” –oh, so Eleoquent, wormmy!
and Oh, so Misplaced:
What IS It that so “feeds the bigots’
irrational hatred of Jews as
a sinister Other”?
“Israel’s atrocities
and the impunity they receive are
undoubtedly the number one driver of anti-Semitism worldwide.”
— Aaron Maté:
Please make
a fucking
Note of
it.
@52 – 55
Did not read
@56 ~ ptrhjqwiorj
@57 – thanks for stepping into my trap
@58~s;EOFI E F
You got some shit on your shoe there, kringeofartian.
@60 its
a mirror
Write some more of your long dumbass-formatted shit
@62
@61 Stung, eh?
from Kurt Russel’s Brilliant ‘Tombstrone’
Wyatt Earp: What
makes a man like Ringo, Doc?
What makes him do the things he does?
Doc Holliday: A man like Ringo
has got a great big hole,
right in the middle
of him.
He can never kill enough,
or steal enough, or inflict
enough pain to ever fill it.
Wyatt Earp: What does he need?
Doc Holliday: Revenge.
Wyatt Earp: For what?
Doc Holliday: Bein’
born.
your
PTSD
CAN be
Eased, sharppy.
there Are Ways, lad.
it’s
Not
Your
Fault.
@63 – kringeofartian, you literally said it WAS my fault on this thread, you idiotic drug-addled hypocrite:
https://www.thestranger.com/slog-am/2025/12/17/80377121/slog-am-floods-claim-first-life-leavenworth-is-hurting-the-us-is-bleeding-jobs/comments
@62: “Write” is rather an exalted term for it, really. It’s more like he’s projectile-vomiting chunks of half-digested material onto the screen, and watching it dribble down after it hits.
After two years in which all of their many words utterly failed to deter Israel’s relentless crushing of Hamas in Gaza, you might think the Stranger (and supportive commenters) would be happy to learn their constant inflammatory rhetoric has actually accomplished something, even if it’s just inciting violence against innocent Jews half a world away from Israel itself.
@51 — “‘Antisemitic
incidents have risen all over the world
since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023
[killing 1.300], and Israel’s military response in Gaza [killing 60,000+] … “
–@the Wormtongue,
still spouting AIPAC’s
pro-genocidal Mis-
& Malinformation
“Israel’s atrocities
and the impunity they receive are
undoubtedly the number one driver of anti-Semitism worldwide.”
— Aaron Maté
and
it’s Still
just as true as
the Ongoing massacre in Gaza
The World
SEES you
wormmy
Oh!
and Speaking
of AIPAC and its
Ownership of “OUR”
Government, if you’re
thee Slightest Bit Curious
about how much Influence this
Pro-Israel — and Pro-EVERYTHING
ISRAEL DOES — Has, you owe it to Yourself to
check out this AIPAC Beneficiaries List.
it includes ALL OF Congress
and the Staggering Amounts
of Influence Israel/AIPAC exerts
Over “Our” Lawmakers
and helps explain
why We are
Backing a
Genocide
and are Complicit
in Over 60,000
Palestinian
Deaths.
it. is. an.
Eyeopener:
https://www.trackaipac.com/
“TRACK YOUR CONGRESSMEMBERS
Do your representatives
support genocide?
Follow
the money
and find out: “
https://www.trackaipac.com/
you’ll Never again See
our Congress in the
same way.
DID NOT READ