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Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash

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Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash

#91

Post by brown9-2 »

DigitalSea wrote: post #46
snowwrestler wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how conspiracy theories are promulgated: propose an preposterous alternate reality and then find real facts wanting in comparison. In this case the alternate reality is that it is "impossible" to crash recent model year Mercedes unless you intend to. This is obviously preposterous since it's not hard to find reports of such crashes with 5 minutes on Google.

It's not impossible to crash any car, the alternate reality here is that a brand new car with more safety features than a padded cell crashed by itself at 4:30am in the morning into a tree and exploded on impact. The point is these cars are built to try and avoid these kind of accidents at all cost, the plethora of safety features cars like these have makes it a lot more difficult than say an early 00's vehicle crash…

I believe recent car models, or at least luxury ones, are designed to eject the engine as a safety feature. An engine projected into the cabin sound quite lethal.

Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash

#92

Post by jlgreco »

wavefunction wrote: post #66
jlgreco wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars can catch fire in real life: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=54e_1333912420 See also: Ryan Dunn's 911, post-tree. Hollywood may exaggerate the rate at which that happens, but not much more.

Ryan Dunn was driving at 130mph when he hit that tree. Not a great example for your position...

What makes you think his case sets a lower bound on the speed required to start a fire?

Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash

#93

Post by dfc »

mrschwabe wrote: post #36

This Hastings incident has interesting parallels to Andrew Breitbart's death. http://rt.com/usa/coroner-arsenic-death-breitbart-456/ Namely the fact that both of these men were prominent journalists, living in the US, each with 'big stories' they were working on that have not seen the light of day due to their untimely death shortly after proclaiming they were working on said stories. To compound the dire possibiliti…

Was Breitbart a prominent journalist? I had to look his name up I did not recognize it. After comparing their respective wikipedia pages[1][2] it does not seem that they were equally prominent but I could be missing something.

I am all for connecting the dots and considering ALL POSSIBILITIES but it seems that after a certain point you need to eliminate some of the possibilities when they do not match up with reality. The RT story about the coroner and arsenic seems to be fringe conspiracy theory material that does not stand up well to scrutiny. It seems that the coroner mentioned in the RT story was not involved in Breitbart's autopsy:

"Those theories were quickly debunked by both the L.A. police and Deputy Chief Coroner Ed Winter, who told The Daily Beast at the time that Cormier had nothing to do with Breitbart’s autopsy"[3]

"L.A. County Coroner's Assistant Chief Ed Winter tells LA Weekly that Cormier did not conduct Breitbart's autopsy. "Only doctors" ever worked on Breitbart, says Winter, because foul play was not suspected from the beginning."[4]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_%28journalist...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Breitbart

[3] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/30/no-answers-...

[4] http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2012/04/andrew_breitbart_...

Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash

#94

Post by gruseom »

eridius wrote: post #53
glasz wrote: post #19

while this story is about a week old and got lost in all this nsa nonsense, listen to what mr. hastings said before his death. even on tv. i am german and i can tell you that a mercedes benz DOES NOT just blow up and spit its engine 100yd down the street. the car wasn't even really against the tree... sometimes you just need to apply a little grain of common sense, ppl.

I never even heard of Michael Hasting's death before today, so I don't have an opinion yet, but I find it hilarious that someone who is implying that a conspiracy is at work here is telling everyone to "apply a little grain of common sense". Conspiracy theories are not common sense.

Conspiracy theories are not common sense

That's a tautology. The phrase "conspiracy theory" intends something only a fool or a fanatic would believe—that's why it's always accompanied by ridiculing language. Cases shown to be real are not called "conspiracy theories" but "history".

Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash

#95

Post by Taylorious »

sage_joch wrote: post #10
corresation wrote: post #5

Another possibility is that he had a nervous breakdown or substance abuse episode, leading to both the paranoid emails and the irrational vehicle operations. Obviously I'm not saying that's the case, but the extremely irrational driving goes fits a theory of paranoid delusions (brought on by any number of mechanisms), just as the hacked car system goes with about to uncover something big.

Yeah, we really don't know. But I'm extremely uncomfortable by the fact that foul play is a real possibility. We already know that the federal government is operating largely in secret and without regard to the law (their insistence that are indeed following their own secret set of laws doesn't provide me much solace). We already know that various press organizations have been wiretapped. I feel like I've woken up in…

Foul play is almost always a possibility if you over analyze things and don't have a lot evidence. If someone randomly kills them self by jumping off a bridge and no one sees it happen, there is no suicide note, or any other signs, then there could have been foul play because there is no evidence to prove or disprove it. For all anyone knows the person was pushed off the bridge by a passer by.

The whole NSA story is disturbing but I don't get how it is connected to a journalist dying in a car crash like 30k or so people do every year do in the USA. The NSA violating peoples internet/phone privacy is a far cry from killing journalists.

It is baffling that a story where there is so little evidence of foul play has popped up on HN multiple times and has received such wild speculation. I get that there are a lot of people who are very upset at the US government right now (I'm one of them) and that there is very title trust towards the US government (for good reason), but it is crazy that such wild speculation is going on in a community that is supposedly made up of highly educated, intelligent, logical, tech people.

1. Why is it practically impossible to crash this car? Its well engineered, yeah so what? Accidents still happen no matter how good the safety tech is.

2. Why is it impossible for a car to catch fire after it has been in a high speed crash? It is filled with a highly combustible liquid for Christ sake.

3. Why would his car get hacked into and forced to crash? There has to be about a million easier ways to make a death look like an accident. It also doesn't seem like something that could be done at the spur of the moment. If "they" had time to plan all of this out, why wouldn't they kill him some easier, safer, more efficient way?

4. Why are people saying he may have been drugged with something that causes a psychotic episode etc. I mean really WTF, this is straight up crazy conspiracy nonsense. Of all the crazy conclusions to jump to, why is that more likely than him being drunk, having a psychotic breakdown, insomnia, or using drugs voluntarily (I believe he was even a drug addict in the past, lots of addicts fall of the wagon).

5. Why do people automatically assume that he was actually being investigated by some government organization? Don't all we have is his word?

Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash

#96

Post by mrschwabe »

groby_b wrote: post #80
mrschwabe wrote: post #36

This Hastings incident has interesting parallels to Andrew Breitbart's death. http://rt.com/usa/coroner-arsenic-death-breitbart-456/ Namely the fact that both of these men were prominent journalists, living in the US, each with 'big stories' they were working on that have not seen the light of day due to their untimely death shortly after proclaiming they were working on said stories. To compound the dire possibiliti…

Uh, no. Breitbart was a lot of things, but certainly not a journalist of nearly the same caliber. And given that he claimed to work on "big stories" pretty much all the time, we can take that out of the equation, too. And your disingenuous argument trying to tie drone attacks into that is an utter disservice to truth. To quote from the fine article: "could target a citizen if he was a senior operational leader of Al…

So please remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Thank-you, I will remember that. I will also remember that, on occasion, extraordinary crimes happen in secret. And that there exist criminals in this world who have successfully suppressed, destroyed, or hidden evidence of their crimes; and as a result have not - and may not ever be - brought to justice.

Note that I wasn't making any claims - just pointing out some relevant information to consider.

Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash

#97

Post by mikeash »

byeworld wrote: post #72
mindcrime wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another question is.. how does a well made car burst into flames so quickly. There was a lot of discussion about various aspects of how cars behave when they crash, in a previous thread. But, speaking as a former firefighter, the tl/dr; is "cars do sometimes catch fire and burn when they crash". Hollywood style explosions don't normally happen, and car fires resulting from wrecks don't always happen, or even happen t…

Interesting parallel (I know the events are not equivalent, but still): Here's a report of a Mercedes crashed at Nurburgring by a test driver: http://www.automotto.com/2014-mercedes-benz-sls-amg-black-se... Both the test driver and the passenger walked away unharmed. Do note that this was on the track, where the cars are supposedly driven at much higher speeds than on regular roads.

People are making a typical statistical error here. It is unlikely for a car to catch fire in an accident, certainly. But it's wrong to take that and conclude that this fire was therefore likely due to foul play. Foul play is still a much less likely explanation for the facts as currently known.

Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash

#98

Post by unclebucknasty »

corresation wrote: post #5

Another possibility is that he had a nervous breakdown or substance abuse episode, leading to both the paranoid emails and the irrational vehicle operations. Obviously I'm not saying that's the case, but the extremely irrational driving goes fits a theory of paranoid delusions (brought on by any number of mechanisms), just as the hacked car system goes with about to uncover something big.

I don't see why your baseless conjecture about nervous breakdowns and substance abuse should be any more credible than the cause implied by this post. I have seen a lot of people coming up with such alternative explanations, which actually go a long way to avoid a more plausible (if less comfortable) conclusion.

Also, I have seen multiple references to some paranoia that Mr. Hastings supposedly had. When I read his email, I see anything but paranoia. He seems very matter-of-fact and even jokes about the investigation. Also, here is a man who had already broken a massive story about a powerful figure and who was in the business of going after such massive stories. Sudden bouts of paranoia wouldn't seem consistent or productive in his line of work.

I take exception to that word because it's dismissive. It seeks to paint him as somehow irrational or the cause of his own demise, while simultaneously waiving the notion that there could be outside involvement. It asserts that of course every element of the government is always good in every situation, such that any concerns to the contrary must be paranoia. It is a very insidious use of language.

And beyond that, it just makes no sense.

Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash

#99

Post by shawndumas »

byeworld wrote: post #72
mindcrime wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another question is.. how does a well made car burst into flames so quickly. There was a lot of discussion about various aspects of how cars behave when they crash, in a previous thread. But, speaking as a former firefighter, the tl/dr; is "cars do sometimes catch fire and burn when they crash". Hollywood style explosions don't normally happen, and car fires resulting from wrecks don't always happen, or even happen t…

Interesting parallel (I know the events are not equivalent, but still): Here's a report of a Mercedes crashed at Nurburgring by a test driver: http://www.automotto.com/2014-mercedes-benz-sls-amg-black-se... Both the test driver and the passenger walked away unharmed. Do note that this was on the track, where the cars are supposedly driven at much higher speeds than on regular roads.

5 point harness and a helmet can really make a big difference.

Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash

#100

Post by ims »

samstave wrote: post #71
sage_joch wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we really don't know. But I'm extremely uncomfortable by the fact that foul play is a real possibility. We already know that the federal government is operating largely in secret and without regard to the law (their insistence that are indeed following their own secret set of laws doesn't provide me much solace). We already know that various press organizations have been wiretapped. I feel like I've woken up in…

Did you guys see the 16 page PDF detailing remote auto take-over? Some are speculating that his car was remotely controlled via this method or tampered with such that his breaks failed. If you haven't seen that PDF, ill to find the link.

> Some are speculating

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word

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