Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

the risk/reward/immediate payoff ratio of things like facebook is criticized because of the addictive quality, but those stakes are absolutely nothing compared to the idea of high stakes gambling with even fewer button-pushing options

dude was just sitting there for fourteen hours a day smacking the pavlovian reward buttons

Paddock said he rarely drank alcohol when he gambled, because "at the stakes I play, you want to have all your wits about you, or as much wit as I have."

that is a weird thing to say about VIDEO poker. it's a slightly more complex slot machine.

it would dull the constant prodding of the risk/reward center in the brain this guy was completely wrecking by playing video poker

people complain about video games wrecking the youth and making them violent, but.... fourteen hours of video poker

https://mises.org/sites/default/files/styles/full_width/public/homicide_51yr.JPG

The original Doom was in 1993.

My uncle, who died in January, was a Vietnam vet, a food-addict, unemployed and living off relatives and Veteran's/disability benefits for over a decade, and for some years towards the end of his life, a low-stakes video poker addict. He was already damaged long before the video poker found him, and it probably just provided a spritz of reward/dopamine that his subconscious found could self-medicate his overwhelming isolation/shame for a few moments. Not a violent bone in his body.

Paddock had his reasons to prefer video poker, and they were probably similar to his reasons to increasingly socially isolate himself. The gambling addiction (which he claimed to earn a living from) was more likely a symptom than cause.

I'm curious how he "made a living" from video poker. I don't think that's a thing.

Not only did Paddock buy the complex, he ran it as the manager and lived onsite as a way of holding expenses down, apparently keeping his own books on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet rather than pay an accountant.

His brother said the pair had been thrifty from the start, describing how they gutted and renovated a 20-unit building in Los Angeles largely themselves. Caring little about appearances, they bought cheap clothes from Walmart.

Stephen Paddock sold the complex in November 2012, for $9.45 million: $1 million more than he paid.

For a high stakes gambler that boasted a million isn't a lot, he sure seemed to work quite hard to make one.

hmm what happened between 1968 and 2000 to account for that huge spike I wonder

Baby boomers coming of age; globalization/ending of American exceptionalism; collapse of hope in a brighter future especially in urban areas; "rationalization" through violence of illegal drug distribution networks.

There was a rise in homocide of comparable magnitude and length from 1911-1941, and the same factors were probably at play: demographics, economic expectation, drug prohibition.

possibly relevant, possibly erroneous correlations with leaded gasoline, and as Shakey implies, waves of veterans of foreign conflict

Lol wow guys my answer to my rhetorical question was actually the War on Drugs

hey there's that too

lol

Shakey, I looked them up and The War on Drugs didn't form until 2005

When I heard this guy was 64 years old my immediate thought was that he's in my parents' peer group, and how many of their peers their age (but mostly a few years older) were vietnam vets

also DJP with the post I dared not make

I just set 'em up

groan.

whatever the cause might be i think it would help to have a deeper understanding about this trend.

all "Gamblers" creep me out, but to do nothing other than video poker seems like an even creepier subset. It is amusing how they seem to fall for the ego stroking casinos do. Love to brag about the "free" stuff they get, their VIP cards and whatnot. Get off on "beating the system", in addition to the obv risk/reward hits mentioned already.

whatever the cause might be i think it would help to have a deeper understanding about this trend.

― nomar, Monday, October 9, 2017 4:23 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id41TAFnMn0

To have this level of access to money and do THIS with it is what will eternally baffle me about gambling. What a fucking waste.

14 hrs a day of video poker for who knows how long def sets the scene for some deep-seated disassociation

I worked as a betting shop manager for years and always remember the ashen faced look on this bloke who had done in 7 grand in an afternoon. Before he left the shop looking completely broken, he says with nil conviction to save face: It's a good job I had a good day yesterday.

Gambling is one dangerous and unhealthy activity to get caught up in.

It's all relative, some people get into financial trouble doing too many 10p Lucky 15's or £3 Irish lottery bets. But yeah gambling is just as deadly as crack cocaine. I have done £1000 bets before, but only with my employers money - which is apart from getting shot at by armed robbers - the main reason I stopped being a betting shop manager!

It used to be refereed to as "having an adventure" amongst other betting shop managers. Like if a friend from another shop phoned me and I was deep in the shit. i'd say: "Sorry I've gotta go, I'm having an adventure and I'm way down". Such degenerate days!

The Manila casino attacker (who ISIS also falsely claimed) was another indebted poker player.

xp that's beautiful and horrifying

Some personal detail from the killer from his own deposition a couple of years back. Still doesn't indicate much.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/09/us/las-vegas-stephen-paddock-deposition/index.html

What fucks me up about all of this is that right now a few people are out there quietly planning a large scale mass shooting and at least one of them is going to succeed. It's going to happen. And no one's doing anything to stop it and chances are it'll be a similarly low key person who in their day to day life doesn't register as a danger. At worst they register as troubled. And like I think I said at some point no one ever thinks someone no matter how troubled will go and do this.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/nyregion/police-shooting-lower-manhattan.html?_r=0

there's a truck ramming too. 2 dead. this is right across the st from our active demo site. our foreman saw the uhaul ram into ppl on the sidewalk...

i'm not getting a lot of details. my crew is really upset tho.

about a mile from my office

some of the initial news accounts had it as a ramming or a shooting

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/people-reportedly-shot-dead-downtown-manhattan-article-1.3602094

http://gothamist.com/2017/10/31/west_side_highway_shooting.php

got lots of texts about this from california folks, while meanwhile I had no clue about it around the corner here

God fucking dammit

The NYPD's official Twitter account has confirmed there are several fatalities and multiple injuries in the incident. Police say a vehicle entered the West Street pedestrian/bike path near Chambers Street, struck multiple victims in the path, then continued south until it struck another vehicle. The suspect then "displayed imitation firearms," per the NYPD, and was shot by officers.

Reports of six dead and being treated as terrorist attack

Now we get to hear how we can't regulate guns because there are cars

I played little league at the elementary school next to Stuyvesant and walked across that bridge over West St. every day when I was a kid. I think about that area all the time. this is so fucked

so the suspect isnt white you say

i'm sure we'll get to hear about regulating certain people

According to an FDNY spokesperson, there are 15 injuries and six fatalities so far. Those numbers are preliminary and may change, the spokesperson said.

Now we get to hear how we can't regulate guns because there are cars

Bingo!

TERROR in New York City

Idiot on CNN says "we need GUN control now"

But it was a TRUCK that killed 6 people, not the terrorist's BB gun

— Bare Politics (@barelypolitix) October 31, 2017

fox only outlet brave enough to run with the terrorism angle

still unverified whether shots were or weren't fired

I'm basically down the street and around the corner and no one knew anything until my boyfriend texted me to be like "Hi are you alive?"

Trump probably thanking Mammon right now

I hate myself but the first thing I thought of was Trump.

glad you're ok, in orbit. i used to take a long lunchbreak every few weeks and walk west on chambers all the way to the hudson, right by stuyvesant high school, so i can visualize right where it happened. :(