Society's ChildS


Ambulance

7 victims after 'First Purge' party ends in shooting at Riverside, California nightclub

Nightclub shooting in CA
© Bob Strong / Reuters (file photo)
Seven people were hospitalized after a reported shooting at 'The First Purge' party hosted at a nightclub in Riverside, California, police said.

"People started falling to the ground, and I thought people were fighting or dancing at first," a witness of the shooting told CBS Los Angeles. "I heard automatic gunshots, there was like 10 in a row."

The police received a distress call after midnight on Monday. Arriving at the scene, the officers picked up two people with gunshot wounds who were then hospitalized. Another five people, also shot at the venue, had later checked in at different hospitals seeking medical treatment, Riverside Police Department said in a statement.


Heart - Black

11-year-old girl raped in New York public bathroom

Sketch of 11yo rape suspect
© NYPD
The NYPD is looking for a teenager wanted in the rape of an 11-year-old girl in the public bathroom of a Bronx Park.

It happened on Sunday about 11 a.m. at Hilton White Park. The girl met with a boy who is believed to be approximately 14-16 years old. The boy asked the girl to enter a nearby public bathroom and then raped her.

The boy then took off and the girl went home and said what happened. She was taken to Montefiore hospital where she was treated and released for her injuries.

The suspect is described as Hispanic, 5'4" tall and 120 lbs., and he was last seen wearing a gray hoodie, dark shorts and white sneakers.

Syringe

Anti-vaccine billboards appear in several US states

Anti-vaccine billboard
© Mercury News
Anti-vaccine billboards claiming that routine childhood shots are deadly have popped up in several West Virginia cities.

They warn that the son of former Ultimate Fighting Championship fighter Nick Catone died from a vaccine, though the infant's death was officially ruled to be sudden infant death syndrome.

A physician director for the Cabell-Huntington Health Department, Dr. Michael Kilkenny, says the case is tragic but the medical community's consensus that vaccines are safe and effective remains unchanged. The Herald-Dispatch reported Sunday that the messages have appeared this month in Parkersburg, Dunbar and Huntington as part of a national campaign by the nonprofit Learn The Risk group.

More than 30 similar billboards have cropped up in Pennsylvania, New York and other states.

Quenelle

What can we do to keep Amazon from devouring everything?

Jeff Bezos
© Cliff Owen/AP/ShutterstockJeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, speaks at The Economic Club of Washington's Milestone Celebration in Washington last month
There are many, many reasons to want to avoid making purchases from Amazon. The company is owned by an anti-union zealot, is largely responsible for the death of brick and mortar stores by selling products at a loss to undercut them, abuses its white-collar employees while outsourcing its blue-collar ones to unaccountable subcontractors, evades collecting sales taxes on its third-party vendors, and has built unprecedented secret databases on you and your shopping habits. (It's unclear as yet how much Amazon's just-announced $15-an-hour minimum wage will ease the pain of toiling in its warehouses.)

And that's without even getting into Bezos's attempts to extort several billion dollars in taxpayer subsidies from whichever city he picks to host his new second headquarters - or in cloying Amazon corporate-speak, "HQ2" - on top of the more than $1 billion in subsidies it's already raked in from local governments.

On the other hand, there are lots of reasons why we continue to select one-click payment. Amazon Prime is a huge lure, bundling free shipping and free TV and movies and music for just $119 a year, all without the hassle of having to comparison-shop your way across the internet or risk of accidentally ordering your underwear from a Chinese scam operator. It's why nearly half of online shoppers don't even bother to use a search engine, but just type their desires directly into Amazon. (Dear reader, it has happened to me.)

Gold Seal

NPC meme deserves 'Person of the Year 2018' award for exposing liberal automatons

npc meme
Nothing hurts more than the truth, and that adage goes far at explaining why the Liberals self-imploded upon being confronted by their hideous reflection in the NPC avatar.

First conjured to life on 4Chan and Reddit message boards, the NPC meme, represented by a crudely sketched stick figure that comes in a variety of persona, was designed as a method for portraying those well-known character traits the right has come to associate with their leftist alter-ego. The term 'social justice warrior,' while loaded with mockery, derision and cynical overtones, failed to nail the dark heart of the matter. What was needed was a meme that exposed the left's superiority complex that is so out of control it lets them believe that by just getting out of bed and showing up for a protest legitimizes their cause and anything that follows.


Thus, the right, which still enjoys the weapon of comic genius combined with computer prowess, supplanted the SJW tag with an innocuous-looking meme that eventually burrowed its way under the fleshy underbelly of the left until it was writhing on the pavement in painful spasmodic convulsions. The arrow was deadly because it carried the ultimate poison known as truth.

For the uninitiated, NPC stands for 'nonplayable character' or 'nonplayer character,' a term borrowed from the gaming community that describes those characters in video games whose only pre-programmed function is to wander about the screen eliciting generic, robotic remarks. Sound familiar? This meme successfully captured the essence of the left to such a degree that it forced Twitter to go on another search and destroy mission, suspending hundreds of accounts thought to be associated with the army of dangerous stick figures.

Comment: See also:


Eye 1

'Beastly' woman stabs ex-husband in alleged fight, takes selfie while he bleeds

Siberia woman selfie stab ex-husband
© Vkontakte / Instagram
A woman in Siberia stabbed her ex-husband with a knife and - instead of calling the emergency services - took a selfie with her blood-soaked victim and sent the picture to friends, admitting that it made her look like "a beast."

The story unfolded in the Siberian city of Surgut this October, following a boozy argument between the former couple, who have been identified by media only as Olga and Oleg.

The row escalated and, at some point of the alcohol-fueled discussion, "the man attempted to strangle" his ex-wife, police said in a statement published by local media. In an attempt to defend herself, Olga grabbed a knife and stabbed Oleg.

Comment: The police may very well be relying completely on the account of the 'beast' in describing the stabbing as self defense. Notice the lack of any marks on the woman's neck in the highly disturbing selfie she took. The disturbed character of a person who would take such a photo, and then boast about it with her friends, is a clearly dangerous one who should not be allowed to care for a child.


Ambulance

Public bus plunges nearly 200 ft into river in China, two confirmed dead

china bus river
Rescuers recovered two bodies after a public bus plunged nearly 60 meters (197 ft) into a river after colliding with a car in southwestern China's Chongqing city on Sunday, state television reported.

The bus collided around 10 am (0200 GMT) into a private car that was driving against the flow of traffic on a four-lane bridge in the city's Wanxian area. The bus then veered, broke through the bridge fence and plunged into the Yangtze river.

The bus sank some 50 meters under the water, state television reported, adding it was not immediately clear how many passengers the bus was carrying.

Heart

Muslims raise over $50k for victims of Pittsburgh synagogue shooting

tree of life synagogue
© Reuters / Cathal McNaughtonPeople visit an impromptu memorial at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the wake of the gun attack.
The Muslim-American community has raised more than $50,000 for the victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that left at least 11 people dead and six injured.

The 'Muslims Unite for Pittsburgh Synagogue' campaign, hosted by the Muslim crowdfunding site LaunchGood, aimed to raise funds to support the shooting victims with funeral expenses and medical bills.


Comment: See also: Police responding to active shooter at Pittsburgh synagogue, at least 7 casualties reported - UPDATES


Arrow Up

Saudi women's activist quits social media: "Twitter is a tool to silence us"

Manal al-Sharif
© Reuters / Lucas JacksonSaudi activist Manal al-Sharif
A prominent Saudi activist has quit Twitter and Facebook, accusing the social media giants of becoming tools for despotic governments to target dissidents and rights campaigners with trolls and bots.

Saudi women's rights activist Manal al-Sharif dramatically deleted her Twitter account, which has some 300,000 followers, on stage last week at the SingularityU Nordic 'global innovation' conference. The next day she posted a video on YouTube explaining why she shut down her account, telling viewers that Twitter has become home to "trolls, pro-government mobs and bots," many of which are "paid by pro-government [agents] to silence, intimidate and harass dissidents."

Calling for a more ethical social media, Al-Sharif said that "the same tools we joined for our liberation are being used to oppress us and undermine us, and used to spread fake news and hate, I'm out of these platforms."

Al-Sharif left Saudi Arabia many years ago in a self-imposed exile, and helped start women's fight for the right to drive in Saudi Arabia in 2011. Saudi women won the right to drive in June this year.

Although Riyadh is trying to foster a more progressive image, the traditionally conservative nation recently introduced laws that see those who post or share content that mocks or attacks religion on social media jailed for up to five years.


Comment: How very progressive. Saudi Arabia sure sounds like a s***hole country, doesn't it?


Doberman

IKEA Russia faces online backlash for allegedly comparing women to dogs in Facebook post

Oregon man dog
© Jamie McCarthy / AFP
IKEA's Russian branch has got itself in hot water over a Facebook ad that some users saw as comparing women to dogs and purveying sexist stereotypes. The company deleted the post and apologized after the outcry.

The controversial post featured a Jack Russell terrier dog sitting at a table in in front of a serving of pancakes. "What to do if you've scratched his car or chewed on his slippers: Cook pancakes with jam; put on the table his favorite [IKEA brand] rag; greet him with a faint smile; avoid saying 'honey, we need to talk,'" the caption for the post read.