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Comment by Shank | Hacker News Reader

This is a dead-ringer for the Metcalf sniper attack: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/02/05/272015606...

Edit: dead-wringer => dead-ringer

Yeah and no. Metcalf was similar in terms of targeting the transformer with rifle fire. But it was more professionally done (in terms of minimizing forensic footprint) and more hands-off, compared to the gate being pulled down by a truck as in this case.

There are a number of potential suspects, but my feeling is that if there are no arrests in 72 hours you can expect a bunch of copycat attacks. Substations are very poorly secured, and targeting them to cause power outages and provoke crises and riots in cities is a central plank of accelerationist guerrilla war fantasies. 'How it would go down' scenarios that hand-wave the details are widespread, and how-to instructions with varying degrees of specificity are eagerly circulated smaller extremist forums. These range from 'fun and profit' type onesheets that would would get a careless individual caught to quite professional ones suitable for (and probably derived from) military educational materials.

BTW it's 'ringer'.

The authorities quoted in the article said whoever did it had a good understanding of the power grid and what they were doing. Maybe it's common enough knowledge, I don't know but it gave me the impression that it wasn't trivially easy to do, making copycats, especially by just the kind of dumbass who would copycat this, less likely

I addressed this in the rest of the paragraph you commented on. I would prefer not to go into detail on the mechanics or the specificity or sources of the instructional materials.

Extremist corners of the Internet have been discussing how to do this for several years down to even suggesting certain substations for maximum impact (thanks in part to gov reports on the subject). It's surprisingly trivial once you learn about it.

The FBI is investigating after a right wing extremist appeared to take responsibility for the attack, with the intention of disrupting a local transgender event. [1]

https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/1599464591196491777?cxt=...

Not a "transgender event", just a drag show

That's a distinction likely lost on the perpetrators.

Sure, but still important to point out that we've moved beyond "We'll commit violence to oppress trans people" to "We'll commit violence to prevent people from publicly wearing clothes we don't approve of." which is certainly an escalation. As far as I know most drag performers aren't trans, and most of the ones I know are otherwise straight. This is fully just "you're not conforming to social norms. We will terrorize a county to punish you."

Not that it matters but I looked up ringer and I beleive wringer is essentially correct but the w was lost and I'm not sure.

We used to speak of substitute players when a team needed to fill a spot with randoms, what is elsewhere called "ringer", nothing about cheating. There is an Old Norse word or something that is translated "fighter" . I don't remember its spelling and could not find the entry immediately. W would become lost in Norse, I guesd (Odin, Vatenfal). So I maintain the hunch that it is identical to wrestling because that's Ringen in German and wringen in Dutch. Again, allusion to the ring in which they fight is petty. Wrestling has a rich tradition but not endowed with literacy. This could easily lead to confusion next to war. Corrolary, a drug ring is not circular, since border running involves bands of war, though they could do a round call.

Hope this helps;

Dead Ringer (disambiguation) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Ringer_(disambiguation)

Wringer (disambiguation) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wringer_(disambiguation)

> from 19th-century horse-racing slang

There's hardly any worse "source" for etymology than that kind of jargon.

> "ringer" was a late nineteenth-century term for a duplicate, usually with implications of dishonesty, ...

Is that it?

> Hope this helps

Not in the slightest, no. If anything it confirms my bias that editors are gullible.

Which, to get back onto topic, would mean to think that the motivation was not exactly what is reported here, but something come a long way.

> There's hardly any worse "source" for etymology than that kind of jargon.

Care to provide attribution links for that claim?

  etymology:'Dead Ringer'

  etymology:'Wringer'

Hope this helps.

I absolutely don't think so, no. Any link is unlikely to help you read and understand my initial comment, seeing that you communicate in bleep bloop

As you are obviously unable to admit that you are incorrect, and are incapable of preforming a basic search,

  it would seem pointless on my part to continue dialog with you.

Hope this helps.

Still doesn't help. Horse back riding is in principle very closely related to ancient warfare, so if anything it supports my point, but new york race tracks with betting and especially cheating being the very topic of your poorly sourced folk etymology is effable.

That's interesting, wasn't aware of that particular meaning.

Seems like some group is making another test of their abilities. Perhaps gathering data on government response and repair times.

Makes me wonder if a coordinated multi-location strike is coming sometime in the future. Scary stuff.

What do you mean 'some group', those anti-trans people pretty much admitted to it.

What group is that? Do you have a link to any further info here?

I think this is what the parent refers to https://twitter.com/cmclymer/status/1599253199126683650,

though there is no confirmation that they are behind it, only that they are glad that it happened.

"the power is out and I know why" implies advance knowledge of the attack at the least, and most likely their involvement in planning/coordination. why else would she know?

Also, we shouldn't mince words here, this is a terrorist attack on civilian infrastructure for political ends. If this had been done by islamists, we'd call it as such. Instead we play the "gosh well she technically didn't say she did it" and "gosh how can we tell what the motivations might be" games... like, we have a group openly claiming responsibility for the attack here and people want to play the "how can we really know anything?" crap. C'mon.

Yeah it does imply that, but that is not the same as a confirmation that they, or someone in their group, are behind the attack. It is a motive, but there is no smoking gun. And it seems that the police have been in contact with the person and saw no reason to arrest them, but they did not expand of why they did not, which I think is a separate issue.

Hopefully they will be able to find the people behind this attack though. And if it turns out to be the person above I hope they will be stuck down with both terror and hate crime.

Additionally, this literally just happened, so for all we know police are just erring on the side of caution by holding maximum cards to their chests while "what the fuck even happened" is still being resolved.

That being said, I also wouldn't give too much faith to the police. Police as an institution have been historically LGBTQ-unfriendly, and have perpetrated anti-LGBTQ violence on an institutional level in the past.

I read it just now and I didn't get any impression they did it or knew who did it, just as you say they they were happy.

For many people, myself included, who grew up in the country, the power going out is not a big deal, and was a pretty regular occurrence. I say this not to downplay it, but because it's easy to see how someone could see the power go out while something they didn't approve of was happening, and feel happy about it, without really considering how big of a deal the outage is for people in the city.

I could be wrong of course, but the most single explanation is that this person just saw it as karma, not that they somehow knew something

"The power is out and I know why" doesn't give you an impression?

I guess I'd cross off "detective" as fall back career

If you take nutters off the internet at face value then you should.

Most crimes that make the news have a few dozen nutjobs calling in claiming responsibility. People will go to great lengths to get attention. And we're already talking about social media posts here...

The person who posted that isn't just some random nutter, though.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/emily-rainey-fort-bragg-captain...

Au contraire

After reading that article, I do think they qualify for the epithet "nutter".

But not random.

Not unreasonable, but the person in question is a former army captain in a psyops unit at Fort Bragg who was kicked out of the force after she brought 100 people on a bus to DC for the January 6 protests, and has been hit with a restraining order to keep off city property for a year int he town of Southern Pines due to her anti-vax protest activity.

This doesn't mean she had any foreknowledge of the recent events, of course, but her comment doesn't read as an off-the-cuff casual reaction either. She's surely aware of the impression it would create thanks to her training and real-world experience with political activism.

That thread was a hot mess of speculation turning some yahoos off the hip Facebooks post into some conspiracy about shutting down a drag show?

I’ll wait for some actual investigation before jumping to conclusions.

Alternatively you could notice how few of these things have happened since this article was published in 2014 and realize the kind of crazy that wants to end the world rarely has the executive function to do the needful :-)

Is is scary, especially after reading about how perilous black starts might be and the scarce sourcing of power equipment.

No need to invoke a large group when one or two individuals are quite capable of driving around several unattended stations and firing multiple rounds into transmission equipment.

It's not that difficult to know which bits to target for the greatest fallover effect.

Not coordinated, think open source insurgency not unlike those in Iraq or Syria.

While back I was listening to a Jocko Podcast episode wherein the host was discussing his watching the meltdown in Iraq.

Internally, the military had some reporting on “Significant Activities,” major protests and bombings and infrastructure attacks and such.

I’ve always wondered is there anything open-source of that nature - tracking “activities” like these?

This page could be a useful puzzle piece…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

What does "open source" mean in this context?

Organization style probably. Where no one is particularly obligated to perform certain tasks, but people with similar problems implement solutions, sometimes as collective action.

>Makes me wonder if a coordinated multi-location strike is coming sometime in the future.

Well...yes. Of course it is.

If for no other reason than there are a lot of angry people who would love to spread misery around and they've now been given an idea of how to do it and places like 8chan and kiwifarms provides the encouragement and planning infrastructure.

So yes, I'd be extremely surprised if this kind of destruction doesn't escalate and become much more wide spread. What's gonna stop it?

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