Boston Marathon

[toomilk]

Explosions reported at the Boston Marathon. Other unexploded devices being reported.

Reports flooding in here:
https://twitter.com/BostonGlobe


This is fucking scary. My boss and her husband are running this. They are ok, but two people have been reported dead.

[ro]

so sad.

what a crazy world.

glad your people are ok..

[runcible]

Just woke up to this. Horrible. The footage is terrifying.

Thoughts for everyone who was present obviously but I also hope no one here was affected. Wasn't this marathon set up as a tribute to the people shot at that school? It's a pretty grotesque gesture to bomb something like that. Like when terrorists in Ireland used to attack funerals... Disgusting.

[Laz69]

Saw the breaking news last night and just horrified to read... tragic news.

[jack white]

the fallout from this is continuing atm
police have locked down a 20-block section of boston w/a manhunt underway. there's already been a police & one suspect killed in the last few hours.

technology is a wonderful thing but also unsettling. am able to follow this mbm on twitter & online. it's even more up-to-date than other recent violent crimes. newscasters tweeting directly from the scene. it's like watching a terrible action film unfold. it's weird looking at it from this angle, hard to get a grasp on horror from behind the safety of a computer screen even tho you'd think the opposite would be happening, that the deluge of primary sources would have much greater impact but it all just comes across as a weird lesson in media relations. it's like it's not really happening or that it's only happening for the benefit of those people reporting on it.. can't get my head round it.. it's very strange to be able to follow a police manhunt so closely in real time. i'll probably get de-sensitized to this at some stage but this time it's a bit of a headfuck..

[redcloud]

technology is a wonderful thing but also unsettling. am able to follow this mbm on twitter & online. it's even more up-to-date than other recent violent crimes. newscasters tweeting directly from the scene. it's like watching a terrible action film unfold.

It is and it isn't (a wonderful thing). I find it very overwhelming. Also, it seems things are said before true facts come in, which makes it very unreliable (eg. the Connecticut school shootings had a lot of false reports printed). It seems best to let the dust settle then read a few hours later to get a more accurate representation. There was also once a time before social media when the TV news helicopters were able to bring an audience to the scene (OJ Simpson car chase). But, even then the reporters did a lot of theorizing and made assumptions based purely on guesswork making it hard to separate fact from fiction.

[Hofstadter]

I have lots of friends in Boston and Cambridge. They are all on lockdown on the college campuses. Scary they said but people are coming together well. My sister is definitely pretty freaked out because she was supposed to be at MIT last night... She's safe though.

[Minky]

I read this comment on another site and found this interesting and I tend to agree with it...

They don't shut Israel every time a bomb goes off.

Think of the implications of this: we just broadcast to the world that TWO men with homemade weapons can bring a city to a standstill, cost hundreds of millions in economic losses, and imprison a million Americans in their homes. They shut down a major city and state capital.

If I'm al Qaeda I abandon the spectacular attack philosophy and send 2 man teams into 10 cities at once.

[redcloud]

Well hats off to all the officers in Bean town. I honestly thought it might end like Waco.

Now the 24 hour news channels are salivating over themselves as they have an entire arrest, sentencing and trial to broadcast, discuss and hypothesize ad nauseaum for weeks and weeks.

[Hofstadter]

I'm always surprised this sort of thing doesn't happen way more often. I feel like yeah, the way it is turned into a whole huge attention thing gives everybody exactly what they wanted/will only make these things more common (especially when it was so easy). That al qaeda quote was depressing but perfect.

My sister told me that there a lot of kids at harvard who went to his high school and so some of her friends knew him/knew of him... Pretty weird that there he was essentially my age and could have been my classmate.

In a horrible way, I think these things have been turned into some uniquely 21st century form of entertainment... There's no other way to put it. The 24 hour coverage, the chase, the shootouts, the the thrilling conclusions, the character profiling, checking out their social media presence, etc. Just a creepy, nationwide sickness/obsession with this stuff that the networks profit off of and that only proliferates these events.

[spzretent]

Leave it to Jon Stewart to nail this perfectly.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-a ... is-is-cnn-