Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, let's jump straight to other conclusions now.
Yes. That's why the comment section is here.
it absolutely is not here for this purpose
Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech
191–200 of 1001 posts
Re: Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I wonder how likely it is that the same population will comment here to say, "I was wrong"? Sure, people were wrong in their assumption that the murder was random. At least that's how it looks now. We haven't heard the suspects side, but.... But wrong that SF has become a dangerous and mismanaged city? Murder isn't the only violent crime and a lot of crime goes unreported. People don't feel safe walking around and…
> People don't feel safe walking around and you can't just dismiss that. It's their "lived experience". Hmmm. This is kind of an interesting question. If people are safe, but don't feel safe, is it the city government's responsibility to fix that?
People vote based on how they feel, so I'd say it is government's responsibility.
Especially since feeling safe is not the only thing government gets evaluated on. I don't feel threatened by feces on the street, and yet I'd want government to fix that too.
Re: Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech
#193This news really highlights the confirmation bias that was in full bloom throughout the "discourse" around the initial reports of Lee's murder (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899 ). Everyone is so quick to jump on negative news about the rare violent crime in e.g. SF thanks to feelings about petty property crime that it's obviously impossible to have any kind of fact-based dialogue about policy. Worth…
Doubly so because all comments raising suspicious about the event were immediately dismissed as bad faith arguments without any consideration.
1. Why was he out by himself? At 2 AM? 2. It didn't seem "random" at all, and in fact seemed like a targeted homicide.
Turns out both of these suspicions were valid. /shrug
Re: Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech
#194This news really highlights the confirmation bias that was in full bloom throughout the "discourse" around the initial reports of Lee's murder (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899 ). Everyone is so quick to jump on negative news about the rare violent crime in e.g. SF thanks to feelings about petty property crime that it's obviously impossible to have any kind of fact-based dialogue about policy. Worth…
Thanks for that. I admit to buying the narrative. Part of that is because my nearest city of any substance is Portland, and it's not especially violent. SF does look more violent compared to Portland, but objectively SF is actually just average or less. Lots of big cities are more violent[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
I grew up in a violent town (high murder rate - even blatant). The difference between that and SF is that you don’t personally experience that violence in my home town. It’s really quite rare it affects someone you know. It’s even rarer for it to be direct.
SF is different. Within my first year there i had already seen someone shot in front my building (i didn’t witness it but the aftermath). An asian friend was slapped and her phone taken - she’d have given the phone anyway so the slap felt unnecessary. You fear parking your car - not trembling in your pants fear but a dread that you’ll have to deal with that shit again (now the breakins happen while you’re still in the car). You don’t know when someone is yelling on the street whether they are harmless or gonna attack you - doesn’t have to be a weapon just yelling at your face with saliva splattering all over you would traumatise you enough - yup, that happened too. My girlfriend and I used to try to help them. We’d give them leftover food - bakery items mostly. We’d see that all tossed on sidewalk when we walk that way again. There was always glass on the sidewalk. There’d be random tents you’ll have to get around. This is daily and adds up.
Like I said, I grew up in a violent town. So avoiding travel at night or going around the house locking windows or being aware of the approaching blind dark spot is something I’m used to. Most everyone around me was not. Even those from the Bay Area haven’t seen. I used to think they were weak but the truth is no one has to put up with it and I think people have the right to “feel” safe as well.
(Again, none if this will show up in a statistic and I’m not saying these people should be locked up in the name of tough on crime either. These are absolutely property crimes and quality of life crimes but you do feel fear and dread almost everyday)
Re: Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
Watching from outside, the whole "Tech Bros vs. Woke Hippies" framing is just nuts. It's at most a local politics dispute over control over the SF city government. And yet it's spilled over into all kinds of radicalized global thinking. People like pg and Garry are out there on twitter acting like the nutjobs trying to deny their startup workers housing and teach their kids about colonialism as a history paradigm are…
Garry Tan used this murder to flog his political action committee on Twitter. Absolutely disgusting.
I guess, if viewed cynically. It seems more likely to me that he was sincere, just wrong. That's the "radicalized" bit I was talking about. The SF tech scene has a smell right now that seems to me a lot like what we saw with the Gamergate incels a decade ago. And that... didn't lead to good places.
Radicalization happens to everyone, even the rationalists. Maybe it's just time to cool off.
Re: Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech
#196This news really highlights the confirmation bias that was in full bloom throughout the "discourse" around the initial reports of Lee's murder (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899 ). Everyone is so quick to jump on negative news about the rare violent crime in e.g. SF thanks to feelings about petty property crime that it's obviously impossible to have any kind of fact-based dialogue about policy. Worth…
> including current faves Austin and Miami Austin has 2.57 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters per 100K. Same year, SF has 6.35 per 100K. So SF is twice as bad as Austin. Your right about Miami though. But 6.35 isn't bad. The murder rate in St Louis (for comparision to the US city with the worst) is 66.07 per 100K. And Colima Mexico (worst in the world maybe) is 182 murders per 100K. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
Per capita rates are often hard to compare (I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with any conclusions). I find the rates often have more with how boundaries are drawn and are especially inaccurate for smaller populations as a reflection of overall safety. There's probably an element of that in the St. Louis numbers.
I once saw a crime map of the boroughs in a city where I lived. It showed the downtown as way higher than others per-capita, but it's because few live there as it's mostly commercial, more than higher absolute numbers. Lots of effects like this skew the numbers.
Re: Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only thing I'm "championing" (just pointing out, really) is that certain populations seem to enjoy using anecdotal tragedy to promote their own quasi-apocalyptic worldview re: some American cities, despite all available data contradicting that worldview. I'm sure everyone here appreciates the update on your locale, and your own stories of property crime and/or non-criminal (yet perhaps unnerving?) personal intera…
Someone saying that the have a gun and are going to shoot you is very clearly assault, which is a criminal act. It would generally quality as a violent crime in statistics (if SFPD took reports of threats of violence, which they will not). While we should use data, we should also understand where there may be issues with the data that we're using.
The gist of your point is 100% correct. I just want to point out that under the common law definition of assault (and i have no idea what definitions are in effect in SF), the fact that the person calmly ignored them points that this might not be assault.
> Assault is generally defined as an intentional act that puts another person in reasonable apprehension of imminent harmful or offensive contact. No physical injury is required, but the actor must have intended to cause a harmful or offensive contact with the victim and the victim must have thereby been put in immediate apprehension of such a contact.
Calmly ignoring the threat is evidence that the person was not "in immediate apprehension of such a contact".
I only bring this up because i think it's interesting, and the underlying point you are making is 100% correct. This kind of thing is not normal nor innocent and not to be tolerated.
Re: Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
> _2600+_ comments on it, most of them hysterical about SF crime [of course, completely divorced from actual stats, i.e. SF has fewer homicides per capita than almost every other American city, including current faves Austin and Miami] On this list of homicides per capita [1], San Francisco ranks far higher than Austin in incidents per capita of "Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter": 2.57 per 100,000 people in Austi…
That's also from 2019. It's possible the OP looked at more recent information? Without knowing their source we won't know.
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Re: Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech
#199This news really highlights the confirmation bias that was in full bloom throughout the "discourse" around the initial reports of Lee's murder (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899 ). Everyone is so quick to jump on negative news about the rare violent crime in e.g. SF thanks to feelings about petty property crime that it's obviously impossible to have any kind of fact-based dialogue about policy. Worth…
The thing that's so weird about that confirmation bias is that some folks held these inconsistent views even within a single HN comment . There was a comment that was on that initial thread where the commenter said that they heard from "very well placed sources in the US Intelligence community this is probably a hit", and the commenter still went on to blame San Francisco for being a "crime ridden shithole". I respon…
I don’t understand, is it that hard for both to be true?
Re: Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech
#200When I moved to SF in 1996, the murder count that year was 86. Last year it was 56. I haven't been back in a very long time, but I guarantee you it's a far safer city than it was back then. I lived on Market between 6th and 7th and had knives pulled on me, and watched a car get blown up across the street underneath Hollywood Billiards, which is long gone now - according to Google Maps, they're building new apartments…
“ Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the poorest folks nowhere to go, and you still complain when they dare to pop up where you are.”
Nope. One of the wealthiest cities in the world fails to look after its inhabitants. A failure of government