Worst Roommate Ever

From the article it sounds like it happened in the course of a fight that the other guy started; the grand jury may have just viewed it as self-defense.

Universities will do anything to lower their crime statistics.

I imagine the back stories that you would find in in ER around the world would make an interesting series of podcasts surrounding human behaviour.

Hope he got out of that relationship. You don't want to marry into crazy.

You don't steal a man's baloney. Everyone knows that. I'm curious...why did he steal just the baloney and not the entire sandwich? Common decency dictates that if you steal a man's sandwich you take the entire thing. You don't leave someone with just two empty pieces of bread. That's probably why it escalated so quickly.

Oddly not. Though, this Bachman guy was the direct cause of so much crazy stuff, I can hardly blame them for glossing over a proximal event (but wouldn't be surprised if he was somehow an instigator). If someone made a movie about this guy's life, I would watch. (also, just a trivial note, this is a NYMag piece, not NYT)

> Great find! So, not exactly consistent with the NYT piece.

First, this is not a NYT article.

What do you think is inconsistent? The article tries to highlight the idea that ‘beheading’ was said rhetorically.

Realistically, there's nothing I can do about it because the eviction process is so long and time consuming, that by the time I finally evict the person, my lease would be over and I'd be moving out anyway. After having given my roommate free housing for many months of course.

> "Giving people housing is important"

I agree! So let's make the government financially liable for any missed rent payments, while the eviction process is pending. After all, if providing its citizens with housing is so important, it should be the state's financial responsibility, not that of a random landlord whose contract was violated. I'm all for universal basic income, but not income-appropriated-from-a-few-random-landlords.

> "Price it into your rent"

Ah, now we get to the real rub. Everyone already does this. If you're a rich, successful individual, you have the luxury of living anywhere you want, at market prices. If you're down on your luck, but want to turn things around, you'll find that many places will refuse to accept you anyway, because the risk is too great. Or they will offer you housing at significantly higher rents, because of the additional risks involved. Either way, you're getting screwed, just because some other deadbeat thinks he's entitled to free housing at the landlord's expense.

> That is of course false. It may be a hassle, but you can absolutely to something.

It depends where. In France you are completely stuck when someone dies not pay. It can take over a year to finally kick someone out.

And this is just if he is not paying. If someone pays, it is simply impossible. Every three years you may take back the house for your or your close family use only. You cannot sell it empty. You cannot end the contract. You are awfully stuck.

You can do something but in many cases it can be a very long and tiring battle. There are a few people who thrive on rental fraud. They understand how the system works and repeatedly take advantage of landlords to obtain free rent.

An example of this: A malicious tenant can just stop paying rent, the landlord will then start the eviction process. But the tenant already anticipated this and filled for bankruptcy without the landlord knowing. That then makes it so you can no longer evict the tenant and they receive protections. This buys them even more time to live for free and the landlord is powerless.

I think it is important to have tenant protections and landlord protections. I am sure there are many tenants who have a legitimate reason they cannot pay rent and should be given leniency with the expectation that they are trying to get back to normal. But when landlords come across tenants who purposely work the system in order to obtain free rent there should be a course of action the landlord can take to ensure these people cannot continue doing so. Based on my experience, and in my area, there are no real penalties for rental fraudsters, like are described in this article. This guy has been running the same scam for years against multiple people, why can this not be stopped?

In San Francisco, it is illegal to for a master tenant to rent a room for more than the subtenant’s proportionate share of the space. You can charge more, but hell will descend upon you once the subtenant figures it out.

In the UK renters only have rights if the landlord doesn't live there. If they are a "lodger" they basically have fuck all rights and can be kicked out immediately.

You can certainly do something, but you will lose a lot of money doing it. Where I live in Illinois it can take months. If someone isn't paying that whole time, that's a real hardship.

I still rent out my old place because I took a bath in the financial crisis and I needed to move. I can't just "price it in" as I can only charge what the market will bear, which just barely covers my mortgage.

I agree with you. In practice, if I had a roommate who was genuinely going through some difficulties and needed 1-2 months to get back on his feet, I would help that person out. What really disturbs me is people taking advantage of the law, acting like they are entitled to free housing, and not showing gratitude/remorse for the predicament they have put others into. That's the kind of person I would want to change locks on, not the former.

Perhaps my wording was too strong, and I apologise for that.

You would typically be an excluded occupier, meaning that you could be evicted with only "reasonable notice" - typically seven days. The landlord doesn't have to give a reason, you have no right to appeal and the police can remove you if you refuse to leave.

https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/private_rentin...

I didn't notice in the article that "they signed a lease/contract".

"He signed the check in a messy scrawl" but not a contract.

In the UK (and many other parts of the world) a contract is (almost) always signed before anyone moves in. Handing a checque means nothing is not bulletproof. One can claim that it was a payment for a selling an old computer (and then the courts will have to do the talking).

Its a bit more complicated than that.

If you are both leasing from the landlord you have equal rights and actually only the landlord can evict.

If you are the master leaseholder and your roommate is subleasing then you have many of the obligations of a landlord.. which means you actually have a lot of regulations to comply with that will probably trip you up if your lessee is both malicious and litigous. Especially if the sublease was established without a contract.

Usually you can get away with it bcause the kinds of people who just stop paying rent are deadbeats and won't challenge.

Evicting someone takes many months, often more than a year. And durign that time, they have no incentive to take care of the property. It can be an economic disaster.

In California at least it doesn't matter. Even in an illegal dwelling the tenants have rights.

I support him. If you want "tenant rights" you can sign appropriate lease contract that allows you to stay longer in case you are in some trouble. Perhaps you could also buy some insurance for that. But why owner of the property would have to keep it in hands of somebody who is not paying? Because tenant is in some bad life situation? I think in most cases if that really would be the case, property owner would help, but in general this problem is to be handled by tenant, state or charities.

The rights you have to continue a close personal relationship with someone by living with them should be distinct from the rights you have over a large-scale landlord to live in one of its investments. Cohabitation is a level of intimacy that it’s completely inappropriate for the state to prevent you from withdrawing.

Not sure about psychopaths (I imagine they fit in there somewhere) but as a less extreme version the complainers and confronters and grudge holders of this world do those of us who are less confrontational some service at times.

I tend to think of "social enforcement" as a sort of commons good. It often doesn't benefit the person doing it that much but overall it helps keep everything balanced.

Someone cuts in line? I'm the kind of person who would usually let it go because well, maybe they're having a bad day. And is it actually worth getting worked up about? Say it's an older lady and maybe she's rude but is it worse to get in an argument with her?

There are some people in this world who will really not let that stuff go. I am glad I'm not one of those people but in many ways I am also glad that those people exist, even if I find myself on their bad side once in a while.

I suppose there are some people who would simply call this assertiveness and describe it as an unmitigated positive. But it's really quite exhausting to do on a continuous basis unless you have the personality for it. I think of it as a boundless capacity to "sweat the small stuff" and I am actually glad that some people have it.

> EDIT: actually, there's the brilliant Marlon Brando speech in Apocalypse Now (https://simonamooon.deviantart.com/journal/Apocalypse-Now-Ho...), where he describes bastards with empathy, people who love their families yet are able to perform the unthinkable atrocities [on their family] to win. So these folks are the opposite of psychopaths -- they do terrible things when necessary and doubtless feel the anguish of it.

Psychopathy is not the reason behind this scenario. It is in fact a polar opposite of it: in this context, doing horrible things is motivated by belief in a greater good. That is also the problem with Milgram's famous shock experiments: in his own explanation he completely ignored the part where the people willing to apply possibly lethal shocks to people where those goaded into believing it was for the greater good of mankind (that is, they were told the experiment was necessary for a better scientific understanding of the human mind).

I suspect you have very secular Western view of the world. You may want to have a look into Scott Atran's work, who dives deeper into this. This RSA lecture[0] is a fine place to start.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ijmBd69878

I am not qualified to speak authoritatively on this matter, but here's how I see it: Psychopaths are mutant parasites. They lack certain abilities that enable them to integrate well into human groups and would not survive well in the paleolithic. With increasing population densities in the neolithic and in the modern age, it became possible for psychopaths to survive and pass on their genes. I think that psychopaths are still rare for a few reasons: the mutation may be recessive, or high population density is too recent for the mutation to have spread widely, or psychopaths may be more likely to die by violence, or they may invest too few resources in their children. In any case, I think increasing numbers of psychopaths would pose a long-term existental threat to human civilization. As far as productive uses for psychopaths go (if we can identify them before maturity), I have no suggestions; it is not wise to put guns into the hands of heartless people who would turn them on us if they perceived any advantage in doing so; one need only look at the example of Mexican cartels founded by special forces to see this.

In evolutionary nomenclature they call this frequency dependent selection. Some trait can have a selective advantage and low frequency but the selective advantage is lost as the frequency of the trait increases in the population. Also, I think you analysis is spot on. This trait is preserves at low frequencies because it has been benefited from positive selection in the past.

This is a really horrible way to put things -"psychopaths are society's ultimate catastrophic re-insurance, the last resort". It's indulging itself in grandiosity and dumbing down a richer picture than that with more gray area.

Referring to someone as a psychopath is quite similar to people calling you a hacker because you majored in computer science then asking you to fix their computer.

Outside of the dramatics, it is true that leaders tend to exhibit typical psychopathic qualities. Things like diminished empathy, cutthroat competitivity, predatorial cleverness, selfish rationality at the cost of emotion, and the ability to project the right mask at the right time are usually needed in high business and politics. At the same time, you can't lump Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates into a group with the high school shooter kids.

It's not really an adaptation considering humans evolved into empathy - psychopathy, physiologically, refers to part of the brain being underdeveloped leading to these characteristics being formed as an individual progresses through life. Of course, it seems like individuals who go through traumatic events or extended drug use often develop at least a subset of these behaviors separately. I'm not a psychologist so I'll stop myself. Either way, it is a much broader picture than you're painting - the humans and the "evolved" psychopaths.

I miss him, his writing and his perspective severely.

He was like the little voice of encouragement telling me that I was on the right track.

I hadn't thought of him in a little while and this hit me kind of hard. :(

> In any case Pieter Hintjens is genius!

Sadly Pieter was a genius :(

I guess that's what I get for just reading half the article. My bad.

Do you also eat co-worker's lunches? Why is eating what you don't buy an issue?

You'd be spending an evening on the toilet by the third day. And I would have laxatives and air freshener as part of my regular grocery shopping list. This arrangement I would be okay with; you get your food, and I get my entertainment.

> or who bought what

Why? Why aren't people entitled to the things they buy? It just rewards people with peculiar tastes or low budgets.

I'm guessing you made more than your flat mates. Is it really that hard to remember what you bought? I can understand this for condiments and spices but I'd be pretty upset if someone took something like chicken.

I'm just going to post this quote about going with your gut from Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

"But one example of the unconscious bias that still exists was a Title VII suit brought in the late 70s, and the plaintiffs were women who had not succeeded in getting middle management jobs at AT&T. They did very, very well on all the standard criteria, but they flunked disproportionately at the last stage, and what was that last stage? It was what was called a “total person test.” The “total person test” was an executive interviewing the candidate for promotion. And why were women dropping out disproportionately? It was because of a certain discomfort that the executive had in dealing with someone who is different. If he’s interviewing a man, well, he sort of knows this person is just like me and he’s comfortable. But if it’s a woman, or a member of a minority group, he feels uncomfortable. This person is a stranger to him and that shows up in how he rates the candidate."

> If you believe you do not have racial, ethnic, and gender biases you are wrong.

When does trusting your gut mean you don't know you are biased? Everyone is biased, get over it. If you are living with someone - yes please trust your gut, live with who you want to live with.

as per the article the move in happened quickly and they were seemingly desperate to get someone in to cover the rent.

I'm not sure what you mean by gender bias, but I am pretty sure, all things being equal, I'd likely let to a woman than a man, even if I were a different sex. All things being equal --income, social traits, etc.

I think guys in these cases would be at a disadvantage.

I agree with your second paragraph, but I suspect that a person holding your views is more easily persuaded that they are being unreasonable when things start to go wrong. One should be much more suspicious of one's gut instincts when one is in a position of power than when one might be a victim.

Not so fast. The comment by a student saying that he scared them is also mentioned in the article.

So, you're a trusting fool? Having the ability to quickly discern someone's initial intentions is a good trait to have. Second guessing your own subconscious judgement based on concern for biases is going to make you an easy dupe.

On the other hand, gut reactions to sociopaths and psychopaths are a thing. Too often though people take your view of it, and try to rationalize that feeling away. I’d rather trust my gut and ignore the pretty mediocre studies about unconscious bias that seem hard to replicate, thanks.

Sorry, I know I'm reading into your statement, but your reaction is very stereotypical 'liberal', aka 'thinks too much'. I do agree with you in that people do have biases, but there are several levels to this, perhaps. The biases you speak of are surface level ones, but 'gut' things are at a deeper level, at least how I'd define things.

I'd say there is a learning curve associated with 'gut' instincts. If your parents were good ones, you'd have acquired such knowledge earlier than I ever did, which to say was much later than ideal... But once you have dealt with enough assholes and full blown psychopaths, your 'gut' is better at picking up the subtle clues.

Then you can start seeing thru the surface impressions easier - I'd say the people you speak of just hadn't had enough adversity in their life yet - and from a BS New Age point of view, that's what allowed this guy to install himself in their lives, to provide them with some life lesson they needed to go through. I'm certainly not blaming the victim - it's just that if they don't take away a useful life lesson then they're missing out on extracting some value from the experience.

I empathize with the people in the article immensely. I'd just say they were too trusting, too 'liberal' (in all the associated stereotypes) and their 'gut' was dumb/inexperienced. The psychopaths/Machiavellians I've had to deal with were not involved in my life as much as a co-tenant would be, but they were close enough. And I consciously picked up little clues to their essential nature over time, but kept not integrating them into a larger more comprehensive picture till it all became a crisis. It is acting on those clues fast enough that is key, and that requires learning through experience.

tldr; there are book smarts and there are street smarts. Both have utility and to rely heavily on one and discount the other is unwise. Street smarts involve training your gut to deal with the jackasses and worse you will encounter in life.

I think it is psychos strategy to find people with empathy for targeting or finding out other psychos. You just talk about bad stuff that happened to you and observe reactions. Reasonable people will be put off and those vulnerable will show how they care.

So I am not dating anyone who is in 'bad luck', if you are in bad luck you should not be looking for new friends, lovers. You should be working on making it better. Question would be also where are your current friends? Having something to hide?

No, he says the names are fake.

It's like Hamlet. A really slow burn through four acts, and all of the sudden it explodes like a powder keg on fire!

There’s a big difference between empathy and guilt. That people feel guilty and responsible for what happened to the man is a legacy of his manipulation, and not something to be celebrated.

Barring a real-time clearance system (as I believe most stores still accepting checks tend to use), a check is just basically an IOU with a promise that there's enough money in your banking account to cover it. Especially in a rental situation, I'm not sure that the lack of an address is a huge red flag--after all, the person is probably between addresses. But a complete blank check without even a name on it? Yeah, that's a red flag given that, even if you've just opened up a new account, today you can get personalized checks within a few days if not on the spot.

I have never seen an address on a cheque. Sounds like a really bad idea to me (privacy etc). Since when was that a thing, and what banks should I be avoiding?

Actually I read the whole thing - it was written really well. But it's far from extremely clever what he did. Anyone who's studied tenancy law for more than a few days could do the same. The only difference he had was being sociopathic enough to do so - a point which the article makes in the end when he turns out to be a murderer. Furthermore, none of the above are in any way related to engineering or hackernews, and it's completely off topic for this site.

HN is an oligarchy, the mods have a lot of arbitrary and invisibly operating power, they're not elected, not subjected to popular control.

I'm not necessarily complaining, it's what make the site what it is, but it's definitely not a democracy.