Tech Leaders Blamed San Francisco for Bob Lee’s Killing. Then Came the Arrest
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
For me, the red flags were:
1. not your average tech bro
2. Rincon Hill is a weird place for a crime like this to happen - it’s relatively sleepy and the homeless population is low compared to other parts of SOMA. Not much (to none) gang/drug activity. No bars really nearby (not even high end ones - a couple of sports bars)
3. no mention of what was missing in initial reports, no hint of it being a robbery gone bad
However murder and aggravated assault are about 50% lower than the average in the same set of cities.
I mean, many, many people in the original thread about this clearly didn't see things so "obviously".
>... reasonable person.
Maybe that's the takeaway, and what was lacking in spades in the immediate conversations.
Does anyone notice how insane spinning a story that hard from a prominent news org is? The line between NYTimes and a long overwrought reddit post is blurring
Nat said nothing more than stabbings are bad and assumed it was a violent crime, a sane reasonable assumption given the information available.
What exactly is the problem? He genuinely believes violent crime is up and that this was some random hobo. I don't recall you or anybody else even theorizing this was a stabbing by somebody who knew Bob personally.
You think his opinion is wrong and therefore he is "biased"? And if this turned out to be what he thought you'd say what exactly in that case? Maybe you're the one who is biased.
At some point people got to stop playing this aha, gotcha games and agree on some base reality. Either violent crime is up or it is not. Some people like Nat are genuinely convinced it is based on their experience living there.
But he started his train of posts in relation to this specific incident. He tapped emotions by saying things like “Bob was someone’s father” and the city was complacent etc. So when it turns out that the city was doing something and it wasn’t a crime committed by a homeless person, I feel the responsible/neutral thing would have been to inform his followers about the truth.
He can still tweet about SF crime rates. But don’t you think someone who hasn’t been following the news but has been following only his tweets will be left with an incorrect impression of the city and the incident?
As he had emotions.
> But don’t you think someone who hasn’t been following the news but has been following only his tweets will be left with an incorrect impression of the city and the incident?
A hypothetical somebody who is very impressionable to begin with perhaps. Nat isn't news or the source of truth. If you take the Twitter bit out of it and Nat/Bob were your neighbors these are very normal human reactions and conversations. Crime is on his mind and somebody he knew got stabbed to death.
I agree that if/when he breaches the subject again he should point out that this stabbing wasn't accidental, sure, of course. I hope he does. I sense that people who disagree with his politics/conclusions hope he doesn't. That is lame.
It is all too convenient and normalized these days to think of people you disagree with as slimy hypocrites with hidden agendas playing Machiavellian games. Heck, you know what, tweet at him, like a human, without the gotcha, and find out instead of assuming.
I can promise you this: if it turns out you are right about this then I will say that I was wrong. :)
This feels straightforward to me. It’s easier to trust people who admit they’re wrong when they’re wrong.
From your response I can already feel what your response is going to be and I want to say I am not disagreeing with you I just think it's interesting how group think works - I myself am not immune.
It is alarming to me (as a not American btw) that everything gets so politicized to the point that base reality cannot be agreed on. Crime in SF should not be some democrats vs republicans or philosophical outlook thing, it should just be a local issue.
Your explanation about his behavior is quite plausibly also sane and rational. I believe you believe that and see how you can think that. I just hope you can afford him the same benefit of the doubt I am affording you so you can talk it out without games, that is all I am saying.
Techies killing each other is even worse than the 'SF crime' assumptions (SF still is a shithole created by techies) and outrage that happened a week ago. Not this time and this one wasn't random.
So comes the back peddling and the wall of silence. Let's see if any of these techies will stand up and act on changing the city that they said they would, rather than now running away because another tech bro killed one of their own.
Also, WholePaycheck closing is not about rough neighborhoods or theft so much as mismanagement. "Let's open a store where they won't force rich tech workers back to the office!" I'm not saying they needed to be a Digger store, but sheesh!
Do i have that right?
This argument seems to be a massive distraction from the problem at hand.
The cause could have been (with equal evidence for each case) aliens, mossad, or a cooking accident, but people were quick to project their biases onto the situation and jump into flamewars or political attacks based on literally no information other than a man having died.
And now is it not only speculation, it’s conclusively just a bad and irresponsible guess.
They just started sharing their stories about crime in San Fransisco from what I saw.
The clarification of this specific event doesn't negate the recounts of others in the related issue of crime.
people were acting like getting stabbed was just something that SF enables
But yes, ideally we don't ever assume, sure. But don't let that distract from actual problems that people vocalized.
And let's also remember that this is a SUSPECT, so we are still assuming to this moment.
In high profile cases like this, the prosecutor risks their entire career if the charges don't stick, so they usually have iron clad evidence or they wouldn't have made the arrest, and would've just waited for more evidence. The suspect hasn't even put in a not guilty plea during the arraignment. Mistakes do happen but I would say the odds are way in the favor of it being what is claimed.
Yes, you are still assuming the odds currently.
Innocent until proven guilty is the setup of the system.
From an article:
> Footage retrieved by police from Millennium Tower shows Nima Momeni getting out of a white BMW Z4 after arriving at the high-rise at 8:31 p.m., according to court records. A little more than four hours later, at 12:39 a.m., Lee arrived at the tower.
> Shortly after 2 a.m., both Lee and Nima Momeni were seen on camera taking an elevator to the building's lobby before getting into the suspect’s BMW and leaving.
> Additional footage obtained by police shows Lee appearing to be stabbed under the Bay Bridge on Main Street, the documents say. The footage allegedly shows a BMW and the red glow of tail lights, suggesting the vehicle was parked. Based on the clothing they were wearing when leaving Millennium Tower, police believe Lee and Nima Momeni were the two people seen standing outside of the car.
> At one point, the pair move closer together before Lee walks away, appearing to be wounded. Nima Momeni allegedly walks to a fence—which is where police found a silver and black knife, the suspected murder weapon—before getting back in the BMW and speeding away.
> Lee was stabbed three times—once in the hip and twice in the chest, according to court records. One stab wound penetrated his heart and killed him. Police found what they believe to be the murder weapon, a 4-inch knife, in a nearby parking lot with blood on it.
> “The defendant not only drove victim to a secluded area in the opposite direction of his hotel, but also brought a kitchen knife with him,” prosecutors said in court records. “Defendant did not use some type of pocket knife, but a cooking knife from an apartment kitchen. This was a planned and deliberate attack.”
All this could very well be deepfakes I guess. Even if he's proven guilty you could say the same thing, because innocent people have been proven guilty in the past. So basically we can never ever assume who did the murder?
My point was to remind everyone of the system we have, innocent until proven guilty by a jury of their peers, not by journalists.
I’m going to push back on that. 70-80% of homicides in the US are committed by offenders known to the victims, with the small minority committed by strangers. People here are smart enough to know that and yet still pushed the "crazy homeless killer due to liberal policy" false narrative. That’s the problem.
It would indicate a specific kind of commenter bias if, lacking any evidence, most comments on the original thread were about alien abductions and cow mutilations. Saying that it's weird that so many people talked about aliens doesn't necessarily mean we should suspect a human. Noting that we know a lot of murders were conducted by humans would be evidence that it was even weirder that there were so many comments about aliens.
But... that comment hasn't been flagged? It just says "[flagged]".
Compare this one from the same thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35456831