this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
374 points (98.4% liked)

Not The Onion

12560 readers
498 users here now

Welcome

We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!

The Rules

Posts must be:

  1. Links to news stories from...
  2. ...credible sources, with...
  3. ...their original headlines, that...
  4. ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”

Comments must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.

And that’s basically it!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

According to police, Charles Smith, 27, entered the Walmart at 1955 S. Stapley Dr. on Dec. 19 intending to film pranks for social media platforms.

Instead, police said Smith grabbed a can of Hot Shot Ultra Bed Bug and Flea Killer from a shelf without paying for it and then sprayed the pesticide on various vegetables, fruit and rotisserie chickens that were available for purchase.

Smith recorded his face, the pesticide can and the act of him spraying its contents. He later posted the recording online.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 149 points 4 days ago (6 children)

Now, this could qualify as terrorism.

Not a single murder of a psychopathic indirect mass murderer CEO.

[–] zbyte64@awful.systems 67 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Doubt many CEOs shop at Walmart, otherwise it would totally be terrorism charges.

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 18 points 3 days ago (1 children)

you'd be surprised. A fairly large number of them are quite miserly, even in their personal lives.

[–] thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 3 days ago

The CEO types have people who are responsible for filing the fridge and pantry. Those people probably shop at Walmart just like everyone else.

[–] Iheartcheese@lemmy.world 17 points 3 days ago (2 children)

What do you believe his political motive was in spraying the produce?

[–] chickenf622@sh.itjust.works 14 points 3 days ago

Whatever you think it is to fit your personal narrative /s

[–] theUwUhugger@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

What was the political motive behind Luigi YAHOOO-ing the ceo?

I would recommend you reading his manifesto as long as you can, its not long but its being taken down from pretty much everwhere

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee -3 points 3 days ago (3 children)

It's been publicallly stated neither him nor his parents were customers of that specific insurance company, so the manifesto is likely fake.

[–] theUwUhugger@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The “We have no indication that he was ever a client of United Healthcare…” (https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/12/13/us/ceo-shooting-luigi-mangione-unitedhealthcare) is a little far away from a definitive statement, isn’t it? If they knew that not to be the case, why wouldn’t they say it so? Its really shouldn’t be hard to find out

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 6 points 3 days ago (2 children)

So... do you think he was a customer, and they just haven't found out yet?

Like you said, it shouldn't be hard to find out. Therefore, he almost certainly wasn't a customer. They'd know.

[–] theUwUhugger@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

So… why aren’t they saying that?

[–] NutWrench@lemmy.ml 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

United already has a serious public image problem with their 30%-35% claim denial rate.

How much worse would it be if they said, "yeah, Luigi's back problems could have been easily fixed by surgery, but we decided to deny that claim and put him on painkillers for the rest of his life." They'd be admitting that one of their many fark-ups got their CEO killed. And that's not going to help their case if this ever goes to trial.

[–] theUwUhugger@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I am not an american so I wouldn’t know, but surely your police force wouldn’t lie in the interest of a company, would it?

Or like, there would be massive legal backlash if the company disclosed false info to the police, no?

What is going on over the great puddle?

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 6 points 3 days ago

police force wouldn’t lie

Absolutely corruptible. That lie wouldn't even be expensive. Company puts in a call to execs running the police, they say how they want it to go down, make promises for money/power/favor, trickles down through the ranks.

massive legal backlash if the company disclosed false info

The feds didn't even pay the reward and there was no backlash. We don't get together well and protest over things that don't affect us individually. Even the left is shit at it. We expect them to lie. If someone produces proof he was with them, they'll just plain plausible deniability or individual incompetence.

Corporations own our political landscape on both sides. The judges, the police, everyone is running with a level of autonomy, wiggle room as you will, but when they need a narrative fed, it's easy. Only 60% of us even believe the truth, feeding a few lies is simple.

[–] inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You can’t be serious are you being serious right now??? Assuming this wasn’t sarcasm the police here lie all the time and it’s perfectly legal for them to do so.

If you ever come here for a visit, trust no one, trust nothing, don’t believe anything you hear or see and definitely don’t talk to the cops.

[–] theUwUhugger@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

To convince someone confess on themselves or to cover their asses? Sure! But its not like on the hearing the defense wouldn’t be able to easily prove whether he was or not, no?

I do not believe that they would lie just on a conference(?)!

[–] inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 days ago

You don’t have to believe it! All they do is lie!

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

That's just how cops talk. Police are trained to speak as vaguely as possible in order to not give the defense any ammunition. If they say "he was not a customer" then the defense can use that in the trial, and why would they want to help the defense?

Now answer my question. Do you think he was a customer, and they just haven’t found out yet?

[–] theUwUhugger@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

How on the bloody earth would assassinating his character help his defense? Maybe if they were lying, that could help I guess?

He is either ought to be, or he is a set up! It is very suspicious that after a week of headless panicking they found the suspect with the murder weapon and an apparently false paper explaining that he did it

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 2 points 3 days ago

The most likely explanation for that is he's not the criminal mastermind you want him to be.

[–] nomy@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Dude you're thinking way too deeply into, it really is as simple as "that's just how cops and lawyers talk, nobody is going to give away anything."

On top of that we have pretty serious restrictions called HIPAA on releasing private healthcare information and no insurance provider in the world is just going to go ahead and confirm plans details or lack of one if they don't have to.

[–] theUwUhugger@lemmy.world 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

So you think the police shared a semi-guess on the conference?

[–] nomy@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

What was their guess? Their statement was a non-answer at best.

[–] theUwUhugger@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I can copy in the same quote from a few comments above? “We have no indication that he was ever the client of United Healthcare…” (https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/13/us/ceo-shooting-luigi-mangione-unitedhealthcare/index.html)

[–] nomy@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 days ago

I'm not sure what you think that statement means.

[–] HelloHotel@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

They are not giving a definitive answer and merly giving their (less legally binding) professional opinion. Its like they dont want to know or publish an absolute.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 days ago

Yeah that's how cops talk. They don't want to put a professional statement out there if it helps the defense.

[–] inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Now that’s a leap of logic if I’ve ever seen one.

If the manifesto is believed to be real and Luigi is the shooter, he did it because UHC is the biggest and denies the most claims by a long shot, a third or so, and then one of their medicare disadvantage plans uses AI to deny 90% of claims.

The fact that he’s a class traitor and this wasn’t a personal vendetta makes it even more respectable in my book.

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The "manifesto" I saw claimed his family were covered by UHC, which it seems is false. That's the only manifesto I've seen that claims to be his.

[–] inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 days ago

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/luigis-manifesto

To the Feds, I'll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 days ago

The manifesto they found on him was completely innocuous. What people are talking about that you consider might be fake is his online post history of the years on several platforms. no way they backfilled several services for that.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

It would need to be politically motivated

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

What political cause or ideology do you think this was done in support of?

[–] HelloHotel@lemmy.world -1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Honestly, there doesnt have to be a political motivation. If its political, they would want to say their message and not just give control of the narritive to the media.

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 2 points 3 days ago

I strongly suggest you pull out a dictionary, and look up the definition of terrorism.

[–] GhiLA@sh.itjust.works -1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I didn't see what store it was but maybe he was trying to kill all of the flies in his local Whole Foods.

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (5 children)

I mean, I get your point......but not every story has to be compared to other stories. In this case Luigi. I also see other people bring up politics during stories that have nothing to do with politics.

And I wonder why people do that. Why talk about an unrelated topic when there's already an interesting topic?

I guess it's not as bad as reddit, where they would instead just post a random unrelated quote from the office, but still....

[–] Ookami38@sh.itjust.works 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's quite simply what's on people's minds right now. It was a major event, it outlines some of the systemic inequalities, and people are interested in the subject.

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah.

It's also just fun to talk about because it probably makes US healthcare CEOs nervous.

After all they've done to the rest of us, it's nice to think of them feeling nervous. If they're not going to feel our grief, or appropriate remorse, or empathy, at least they can feel nervous.

[–] thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 3 days ago

There's a good book about capitalism and what happens when the CEO class gets nervous about the underclass getting tired of their shit. It's called The Iron Heel by Jack London. It's what inspired 1984 and is the start of the dystopian future sci-fi writing.

The basic premise is it never ends like the French Revolution when the workers revolt because the regular person has too much invested in the status quo.

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's a current event being compared to another current event. One about a murder, and the other potentially attempted homicide, depending on the pesticide used. Seems to be pretty related to me, regardless of any politics.

Just because they call it a "prank", and the media uses the same shitty term, that doesn't make spraying pesticides on food for unsuspecting citizens to grab any less dangerous.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

One has a potential villain above the law and a moral purpose in removing him, or is at least a sympathetic figure striking out at one of the many causes of our misery, and who we can applaud. There is a root cause in desperate need of fixing but corporate voices in search of profit who are somehow more important than people’s lives

The other is threatening people’s lives and health by contaminating food, and dismissing as a “prank” for clicks. He needs plenty of time in jail and to forfeit whatever cash those clicks might bring. There is no morality play, no political difference, only exploiting the worst of humanity for cash

[–] inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 days ago

Politics is everywhere because it affects every aspect of our lives even if we consider ourselves apolitical and don’t pay attention to the news or politics.

This story isn’t going away because even amongst the apolitical our healthcare system has fucked over nearly everyone either directly or a close loved one. The only people not getting fucked over are those on the tippy top. Even the upper middle class - if they get cancer they can lose their life’s savings. And our end of life care is essentially vultures picking clean a body only replace vultures with the health care system that keeps people alive for far too long past their natural life span to milk every last cent out of them.

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 3 points 3 days ago

It reminds me of the dupes on Facebook that comment "must have been a Kamala voter" on every video of someone doing something stupid.

[–] AmidFuror@fedia.io 2 points 3 days ago

Corporate needs you to find the difference between this story and this story.

(They're the same story)

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works -2 points 3 days ago

Now, this could qualify as terrorism.

🤣