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MIT professor shot at his Massachusetts home dies

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Re: MIT professor shot at his Massachusetts home dies

#111

Post by Eisenstein »

wat10000 wrote: post #80
mothballed wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a reasonable guess, but 8:30p seems like a dumb time for a home robbery. Usually they're committed during the day when people are at work, and if not that then deep in the night for maximum cover. 8:30 is almost like the ideal time if you actually want someone to be there and answer the door at an hour where it wouldn't cause enough alarm for them to answer the door with a weapon.

When it comes to small-scale crime like this, the smartest thing is typically not to do it at all. So the people who do it will generally not be very smart.

> small-scale crime like this

You mean murder?

Re: MIT professor shot at his Massachusetts home dies

#113

Post by socketcluster »

screye wrote: post #96
JuniperMesos wrote: post #75

My prediction is that it was a random home invasion robbery committed by someone with multiple previous felonies who had no idea that the person living in the house they were trying to rob was a MIT professor. But I have no more information than anyone else does, I'm making a low-confidence educated guess, and at some point in the near future it's very likely that the professionals whose job it is to investigate seri…

Unlikely. He was killed in the foyer [1] of his building in an exceedingly safe city (Brookline, MA). In a neighborhood with mixed SFHs and condos, it makes little sense to target a condo. Makes even less sense for someone to break in, but to shoot the victim outside, in the foyer. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmbmBNre5SQ

Other possibility; a disgruntled investor who poured millions into dead-end fusion research and now wishes they had invested in AI research instead? Blames the professor for persuading them to invest in fusion.

It's a tough one to find a motive for...

Re: MIT professor shot at his Massachusetts home dies

#114

Post by roncesvalles »

karlgkk wrote: post #108
TiredOfLife wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's 100 times more than I thought.

The us has a population of about 340,000,100. Notice where the 1 is.

Tangential but I think that's a terrible way of making your point because intuitively we don't look at digits of a numbers and think log scale. That looks more like 1/3 instead of 0.000029%.

Re: MIT professor shot at his Massachusetts home dies

#115

Post by seanmcdirmid »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #75

My prediction is that it was a random home invasion robbery committed by someone with multiple previous felonies who had no idea that the person living in the house they were trying to rob was a MIT professor. But I have no more information than anyone else does, I'm making a low-confidence educated guess, and at some point in the near future it's very likely that the professionals whose job it is to investigate seri…

It could be a disgruntled grad student? That is shockingly not unheard of in academia.

Re: MIT professor shot at his Massachusetts home dies

#116

Post by randycupertino »

foobarian wrote: post #104
wat10000 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to small-scale crime like this, the smartest thing is typically not to do it at all. So the people who do it will generally not be very smart.

In this day and age who robs homes any more? You'd be liable to get paid to take a bunch of junk away instead

When BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) came to Pleasanton CA my fox-news brainwashed racist aunt and uncle and their neighbors where legitimately convinced black people from Oakland were going to come take BART out from Oakland and steal their TVs. And this was back in the day of the giant bulky heavy-backed rear-projection TVs. I was like... first of all they drive cars now and second of all who is going to take BART to come rob you and third of all who would want to carry this stupid heavy thing!! And if they were going to take your 150lb TV they would need a truck and a dolly, not take public transit to do so.

Pleasanton remained safe and bland despite allowing evil public transit.

Re: MIT professor shot at his Massachusetts home dies

#117

Post by stevenwoo »

foobarian wrote: post #104
wat10000 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to small-scale crime like this, the smartest thing is typically not to do it at all. So the people who do it will generally not be very smart.

In this day and age who robs homes any more? You'd be liable to get paid to take a bunch of junk away instead

The little but wealthy town of Los Altos Hills next to Palo Alto had Flock come in and install their camera surveillance after a string of burglaries and one or two home invasion style robberies, it's a mostly rural/suburban area. Believe it or not there are also still folks who come from cultures where they do not believe in banks in the USA, so there is a lot of cash and gold in those people's homes.

Re: MIT professor shot at his Massachusetts home dies

#118

Post by richardfeynman »

jimbo808 wrote: post #97
RagnarD wrote: post #89

[flagged]

Your only data point is the ethnicity of the victim, and that's all it takes for you to suggest it was a hate crime?

Another data point is that Jews are getting killed and assaulted around the world. With that said, I agree that for now there's no actual evidence supporting this allegation. But I wouldn't be totally shocked to learn that his ethnicity or zionist beliefs had something to do with this, if indeed he was Jewish (which hasn't been confirmed).

Re: MIT professor shot at his Massachusetts home dies

#119

Post by uselesswords »

acdha wrote: post #92
RagnarD wrote: post #89

[flagged]

You’re trying too hard to make that conspiratorial take: most responsible outlets don’t speculate on motives until there’s some evidence of a connection. For example, the stories I’ve read quoted his neighbors wondering whether there’s a connection to what happened at Brown, which is just an hour away and still has the killer at large. If there’s any evidence of an anti-Jewish motive, I will be shocked if it’s not an…

> most responsible outlets don’t speculate on motives until there’s some evidence of a connection

That is simply not true, every single news outlet without fail speculates, uncritically quotes a speculator, or leaves out warranted critical speculation at their own discretion. Pick a news site that you think doesn’t do this and I will happily find an example from their front page.

Re: MIT professor shot at his Massachusetts home dies

#120

Post by BobbyJo »

TiredOfLife wrote: post #107
cmckn wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This basically never happens, about 100 people die a year in the US during a “burglary gone wrong”. People think it’s common, though; it’s the go-to cover story in almost any Dateline episode.

That's 100 times more than I thought.

You thought only one person a year died during break ins gone wrong? Vending machines kill more than that.
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