Mohammed the clock kid cons country to get sneak peek at Obama's penis for TERRORISM!



  • The US is good at startups because it maintains a healthy culture of encouragement for young innovators.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @flabdablet said:

    The US is good at startups because it maintains a healthy culture of encouragement for young innovators.

    Fucking liberals have ruined the public school system, as you have appropriately noticed.



  • Ehhh... heard about that, and it strikes me as a pretty reasonable expectation that the device would cause a stir, actually. For all anyone knew it could've been a homemade bomb, and I wouldn't expect a non-expert to try to tell the difference between a homemade electronic clock and a homemade bomb detonator timer.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @anotherusername said:

    as a pretty reasonable expectation that the device would cause a stir, actually. For all anyone knew it could've been a homemade bomb

    Bull. What, do you think he would have hollowed out the chips and packed C4 into them? There were pictures in the story.



  • @anotherusername said:

    I wouldn't expect a non-expert to try to tell the difference between a homemade electronic clock and a homemade bomb detonator timer.

    Because the complete lack of anything even vaguely resembling explosive was so NOT AT ALL TOTALLY OBVIOUS.



  • I think I don't want the average high school teacher getting close enough to a might-be-bomb to tell the difference.

    @flabdablet said:

    Because the complete lack of anything even vaguely resembling explosive was so NOT AT ALL TOTALLY OBVIOUS.

    Like, say, batteries?

    I'm not saying they should've waterboarded the kid. I'm just saying some careful investigation (by someone who actually knows what they're doing) was definitely warranted.



  • @anotherusername said:

    careful investigation

    It was this.

    It was built into one of these.

    Filed under: call the bomb disposal robot



  • @anotherusername said:

    Ehhh... heard about that, and it strikes me as a pretty reasonable expectation that the device would cause a stir, actually.

    No. Wrong.

    @anotherusername said:

    For all anyone knew it could've been a homemade bomb,

    Really fucking stupid people, perhaps.

    For one thing, there's no explosives in it nor any place to hide explosives. It's a breadboard, a LED screen, and a little metal box.

    @anotherusername said:

    and I wouldn't expect a non-expert to try to tell the difference between a homemade electronic clock and a homemade bomb detonator timer.

    Even if it was a "bomb detonator timer", without any explosives attached it's still fucking harmless.

    Look, as an American, shit like this is really fucking embarrassing.

    So here's the deal: how about we give Texas to Europe. You can have it. Yes, even Dell. Take Dell. I'll gladly take that hit to prevent a moronic thing like this from ever happening in the US again.



  • I already saw the picture. You really think the average person looks at that and says "big LED display, couple'a circuit boards, transformer, battery clip and some wires"? (think there's a piezo beeper too, but it's a rather dark picture)

    They don't. They say "that looks exactly like a homemade bomb in virtually any movie I've ever seen".

    Anyway, if I wanted to hide C4 in that, I'd put it directly behind the ginormous LED display.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @flabdablet said:

    It was built into one of these.

    That tiger does look pretty menacing...



  • @anotherusername said:

    I already saw the picture. You really think the average person looks at that and says "big LED display, couple'a circuit boards, transformer, battery clip and some wires"?

    I don't give a shit what the average person sees.

    The kid said it's a clock, and it's a fucking clock. There was no reason to distrust him. There was no reason to suspect the "device" was criminal in nature.

    We have this thing here in the US called "presumption of innocence". We're kind of proud of it, well, except in Texas I guess.



  • No, no. There's never any reason to distrust the guy whose bag just started beeping or who dropped his backpack and left, until the fucking thing blows up and kills a bunch of people.

    And if he says it's just a homemade egg timer, we certainly can't have an actual expert come verify that it's not actually gonna blow up. Because if we don't just take his word for it, we might hurt his feelings.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    We have this thing here in the US called "presumption of innocence". We're kind of proud of it, well, except in Texas I guess.

    That only applies to white folks, surely?





  • @anotherusername said:

    They say "that looks exactly like a homemade bomb in virtually any movie I've ever seen".

    So it's ok to be belgium retarded and think movies faithfully reflect reality? It's ok for the POLICE to think life is like the movies? That's the position you want to defend?



  • @anotherusername said:

    No, no. There's never any reason to distrust the guy whose bag just started beeping or who dropped his backpack and left, until the fucking thing blows up and kills a bunch of people.

    Because that's likely to occur.

    How about I take my chances? Since 99.999999999999999% of the time a dropped backpack does not explode, how about we all just chill-out a bit? If this is the 0.00000000000000000000000000001%, then I'll happily apologize.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    If this is the 0.00000000000000000000000000001%, then I'll happily apologize.

    Except you won't have to, because then we'd all be blowed up! It's win-win!

    Filed under: go away, baiting


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @blakeyrat said:

    I don't give a shit what the average person sees.

    The kid said it's a clock, and it's a fucking clock. There was no reason to distrust him. There was no reason to suspect the "device" was criminal in nature.

    We have this thing here in the US called "presumption of innocence". We're kind of proud of it, well, except in Texas I guess.

    Yeah, and it emphasized texttotally wasn't profiling. The cop even said, “Yup. That’s who I thought it was."



  • @blakeyrat said:

    The kid said it's a clock, and it's a fucking clock. There was no reason to distrust him.

    To be fair, I'm not even sure Sharia law permits clocks.



  • @Kian said:

    So it's ok to be ■■■■■■■ retarded and think movies faithfully reflect reality? It's ok for the POLICE to think life is like the movies? That's the position you want to defend?

    I'm very much okay with non-experts (yes, that includes most police) thinking "I don't understand this contraption, therefore it might be something dangerous". If more people did that, we might have fewer Darwin award winners.

    I'm actually more concerned that eventually someone builds an actual bomb and nobody bats an eye at it because it looks nothing like the ones in movies.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Because that's likely to occur.

    Given enough time it's certain to occur.

    @Polygeekery said:

    Yeah, and it emphasized texttotally wasn't profiling. The cop even said, “Yup. That’s who I thought it was."

    I'm actually more concerned that eventually a white kid builds an actual bomb and nobody bats an eye at it because, well, he's white.



  • @anotherusername said:

    There's never any reason to distrust the guy whose bag just started beeping or who dropped his backpack and left, until the fucking thing blows up and kills a bunch of people.

    [quote=Popehat]We're expected to give cops and administrators the benefit of the doubt. I don't: I think they are like any other human beings. There are some good and some bad. Some care, and some are doing what they do to increase their own power. But even the well-intentioned who participate in a culture of fear are blameworthy. To them, I say this: you say you're trying to protect our children. But instead you've devoted your career to making the world a worse place for them.[/quote]

    pcbe



  • @anotherusername said:

    I'm very much okay with non-experts (yes, that includes most police) thinking "I don't understand this contraption, therefore it might be something dangerous". If more people did that, we might have fewer Darwin award winners.

    If these retards assumed everything they didn't understand was a bomb, they'd think literally everything everywhere was a bomb.



  • If someone knows enough to know when they don't know enough about something to safely mess with it, I'm not criticising them for calling someone who knows more about it to come and look at it before they do.



  • @anotherusername said:

    I'm actually more concerned that eventually someone builds an actual bomb and nobody bats an eye at it because it looks nothing like the ones in movies.

    Then you shouldn't be "understanding" of people who try to instill unfounded fear in everyone around them. You say you are concerned of something (that you shouldn't rationally be concerned about, since you are more at risk of lightning striking you), but you defend behavior that puts you more at risk of it.

    @anotherusername said:

    I'm not criticising them for calling someone who knows more about it to come and look at it before they do.
    Except that's not what they did, they confiscated the bomb, and prodded at it while interrogating a kid, then arrested him and pressed charges. This is not some abstract hypothetical example. A high-school kid was cuffed and paraded in front of his classmates for expressing interest in technology and willingly sharing that interest with his teachers.

    There actually was someone with the appropriate knowledge in that school, the engineering teacher the kid first showed the clock to.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @anotherusername said:

    If someone knows enough to know when they don't know enough about something to safely mess with it, I'm not criticising them for calling someone who knows more about it to come and look at it before they do.

    Seriously folks? This long of a line of bullshit and no one has posted the meme yet?

    Alright. I will be that guy...


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    The kid said it's a clock, and it's a fucking clock. There was no reason to distrust him. There was no reason to suspect the "device" was criminal in nature.

    Yeah. And they all agreed that it didn't appear to be a bomb. But hey...gotta find something to charge him with. That's how modern school discipline works now that the schools are all run by Ed.D.s.

    @flabdablet said:

    That only applies to white folks, surely?

    Unless he's a college student.

    @flabdablet said:

    https://twitter.com/omarghabra/status/644210841580015616

    Good ideas thread is :arrows:

    @blakeyrat said:

    If these retards assumed everything they didn't understand was a bomb

    What about the retards who inexplicably think emphasized textthose retards thought it was a bomb when the article says they didn't?



  • @Kian said:

    Except that's not what they did, they confiscated the bomb, and prodded at it while interrogating a kid, then arrested him and pressed charges.

    @boomzilla said:

    But hey...gotta find something to charge him with. That's how modern school discipline works now that the schools are all run by Ed.D.s.

    He wasn't charged with anything. They released him once it became clear that (a) it wasn't a bomb and (b) it wasn't a fake bomb, which depends on his intent, and requires that you actually interview people, and takes some time.



  • @anotherusername said:

    He wasn't charged with anything.

    Right, sorry. From the article:

    Original story by Avi Selk:

    IRVING — Ahmed Mohamed — who makes his own radios and repairs his own go-kart — hoped to impress his teachers when he brought a homemade clock to MacArthur High on Monday.

    Instead, the school phoned police about Ahmed’s circuit-stuffed pencil case.

    So the 14-year-old missed the student council meeting and took a trip in handcuffs to juvenile detention. His clock now sits in an evidence room. Police say they may yet charge him with making a hoax bomb — though they acknowledge he told everyone who would listen that it’s a clock.

    In the meantime, Ahmed’s been suspended, his father is upset and the Council on American-Islamic Relations is once again eyeing claims of Islamophobia in Irving.

    So they knew it wasn't a bomb, and they knew it wasn't a hoax (since he made every effort to tell everyone it was a clock and the teacher chose not to believe him), but they were still considering it until the news broke and the attention of the whole country was on them.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @anotherusername said:

    I'm not saying they should've waterboarded the kid. I'm just saying some careful investigation (by someone who actually knows what they're doing) was definitely warranted.

    Which was essentially done. Nobody at any time thought this kid had a real bomb. Did you read the entire article? They just decided to charge him anyway--and then sort of doubled down by talking about charging him with "making a hoax bomb."


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    So here's the deal: how about we give Texas to Europe.

    Fuck that--just Irving or Arlington, whichever this happened in.

    Oh, and they can have Austin, too.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    If these retards assumed everything they didn't understand was a bomb, they'd think literally everything everywhere was a bomb.

    Remember when Boston was in the news because the cops thought Mooninators might be bombs, and all the other cities, even NYC, laughed at them?



  • @anotherusername said:

    Given enough time it's certain to occur.

    That's not how probability works.



  • @flabdablet said:

    pcbe

    President's Council on Bioethics ?
    Philadelphia Council for Business Economics (Philadelphia, PA) ?
    Peterborough County Board of Education (Canada) ?
    Piezoelectric Ceramic Bimorph Element (otology) ?
    Pleasants County Board of Education (West Virginia)?


  • Java Dev

    It is almost certain to occur in finite time.



  • @Kian said:

    So they knew it wasn't a bomb, and they knew it wasn't a hoax (since he made every effort to tell everyone it was a clock and the teacher chose not to believe him)

    The people (well, some people) at the school didn't know it wasn't a bomb, regardless of what he told them. The police, once they showed up, were probably able to pretty quickly ascertain that it wasn't a bomb, but they didn't know it wasn't a hoax until they interviewed everyone.

    @FrostCat said:

    Nobody at any time thought this kid had a real bomb.

    The police were called because some people at the school thought it could be a real bomb.

    @FrostCat said:

    They just decided to charge him anyway

    No they didn't. He wasn't charged.

    @FrostCat said:

    then sort of doubled down by talking about charging him with "making a hoax bomb."

    "making a hoax bomb" is still illegal if that's your intent. The police came and didn't know if it was a bomb, a hoax bomb, or a misunderstanding, so they proceeded to investigate.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @anotherusername said:

    The people (well, some people) at the school didn't know it wasn't a bomb, regardless of what he told them.

    Look, the article said his teachers were pretty sure it wasn't a bomb. The article didn't say anything about the bomb squad being called, just the police. You think a regular cop has special bomb-detecting training?

    There have been enough of these stories over the years that we can confidently state that what most likely happened is some bureaucrat felt they had to call the cops because procedure, because that's what they do. Just like the little kid who bit a pop-tart into a shape resembling a gun, or--well, fuck it, you can click this link for a list of equally stupid things that happened because school adminstrators refused to use their brains.



  • @FrostCat said:

    the article said his teachers were pretty sure it wasn't a bomb

    The one teacher who apparently truly knew it wasn't a bomb (his engineering teacher, I mean not counting the kid himself) warned him not to show it to any of his other teachers. And the chief of police was quoted saying that it was "certainly suspicious in nature." So you have his engineering teacher and the chief of police both in agreement: it looked like it could've been a bomb. And that's before it started making noise.

    Even if it wasn't a bomb, they had to determine that he truly wasn't intending to frighten anyone with it, since after he was warned to keep it out of sight, it started making noise in another one of his classes. Did he forget about the alarm, and forget to take the battery out? Or did he think it'd be a funny joke?

    It's nowhere near as brain-dead stupid as suspending kids for finger-guns and pop tart art.



  • @anotherusername said:

    The police, once they showed up, were probably able to pretty quickly ascertain that it wasn't a bomb, but they didn't know it wasn't a hoax until they interviewed everyone.

    Why would they assume it was a hoax? Did someone come forward and say the kid claimed it was a bomb? You don't just assume a crime happened and then look for evidence that it didn't. You need evidence that a crime happened first. In the case of a hoax, you need a fake threat or someone accusing him of saying it was a bomb. Some shred of evidence that he did intend to cause alarm. If someone calls you telling you "this kid claims he built a clock but I think it's a bomb", you can't then turn around and consider charging him for making a hoax when it turns out he was telling the truth.

    @anotherusername said:

    The one teacher who apparently truly knew it wasn't a bomb (his engineering teacher, I mean not counting the kid himself) warned him not to show it to any of his other teachers.
    That's not proof that the teacher thought it looked like a bomb. That's proof that his teacher realized everyone else at his school is retarded.



  • @anotherusername said:

    The one teacher who apparently truly knew it wasn't a bomb (his engineering teacher, I mean not counting the kid himself) warned him not to show it to any of his other teachers.

    I guess he has a realistic estimation of the IQ level of the rest of the school. (Hint: sub-50.)

    @anotherusername said:

    And the chief of police was quoted saying that it was "certainly suspicious in nature."

    Yeah, and his statement was quoted by me as "certainly ass-covering in nature".

    You think the police chief is going to go in front of the cameras and say, "goddamned we fucked up, holy shit are we dumber than a bag of hammers!"?

    @anotherusername said:

    Did he forget about the alarm, and forget to take the battery out?

    So he got arrested because he forgot the alarm was set? You're ok with this?

    @anotherusername said:

    It's nowhere near as brain-dead stupid as suspending kids for finger-guns and pop tart art.

    It's exactly as stupid.



  • @anotherusername said:

    it looked like it could've been a bomb.

    So the testimony of a bunch of idiots that don't know what a bomb looks like is enough reason to cuff a kid for bringing something that "looked like a bomb". Hint: if they don't know what a bomb looks like, you can't rely on them to identify a bomb.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @FrostCat said:

    Remember when Boston was in the news because the cops thought Mooninators might be bombs, and all the other cities, even NYC, laughed at them?

    No. WTF is a Mooninator? Google did not elucidate.



  • They're mooninites. I posted a YouTube clip featuring them just yesterday.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3dfGv7cD7o

    They're aliens from the moon who look like Atari characters who come to earth to try to convince Meatwad to take up a life of crime. Duh. Everybody knows that.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    I posted a YouTube clip featuring them just yesterday.

    Didn't watch it then. Not watching it now.

    @blakeyrat said:

    They're aliens from the moon who look like Atari characters who come to earth to try to convince Meatwad to take up a life of crime.

    Ah, thanks.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Everybody knows that.

    LIAR

    Henry Rollins - Liar - Higher Quality – 04:51
    — D-OveRMinD



  • @flabdablet said:

    The US is good at startups because it maintains a healthy culture of encouragement for young innovators.

    People who are into amateur chemistry have been assumed to be making either meth or explosives for a while now, so I'm not surprised that this guilty-until-proven-innocent anti-intellectualism has expanded into electronics.


  • Considered Harmful

    Hi - this may go over your head, but:

    @blakeyrat said:

    You're exactly as stupid.



  • @Kian said:

    @anotherusername said:
    it looked like it could've been a bomb.

    So the testimony of a bunch of idiots that don't know what a bomb looks like is enough reason to cuff a kid for bringing something that "looked like a bomb". Hint: if they don't know what a bomb looks like, you can't rely on them to identify a bomb.

    You can't rely on them to not identify a bomb, either. The fact that they identified something as a bomb doesn't mean it's not a bomb just because they're too dumb to reliably identify bombs.

    I guess if someone really wanted to get away with it, they should make a bomb that looks like bombs in all the movies. Idiots will think it's a bomb, but since they don't know what a bomb looks like, intelligent people like you will be certain it's not one. Sounds like the perfect disguise.

    Also, if someone built something that intentionally looked like a bomb with the intent to use it to scare people, that's also illegal. Just because it's not a bomb doesn't mean there was no crime committed.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @boomzilla said:

    Didn't watch it then. Not watching it now.

    Yeah, I typoed the name. There was a movie a few years ago where they were in--as part of the "advertising", they put up a few light-up ones in a bunch of cities. Looked sort of like pedestrian walk lights. Most cities just laughed and took 'em down. Boston freaked out that they might be bombs. Then when other cities laughed, they doubled down about how it could have been bombs and then everyone else would've felt really stupid.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Yeah, and his statement was quoted by me as "certainly ass-covering in nature".

    You think the police chief is going to go in front of the cameras and say, "goddamned we fucked up, holy shit are we dumber than a bag of hammers!"?

    No. Why would he take the blame? If he thought it was a moronic overreaction, he'd say the school administrators overreacted by calling the cops. The cops had to come and investigate; they can't be at fault for that. They were just doing their job.



  • @anotherusername said:

    They were just doing their job.

    Perp walk the brown kid. Make America great again!



  • @flabdablet said:

    @anotherusername said:
    They were just doing their job.

    Perp walk the brown kid. Make America great again!

    I'd just like to point out a double standard here:

    If a brown kid says something's not a bomb, we have to believe him. Heaven forbid anyone should assume he's a terrorist just because of a few examples of brown people doing bad stuff.

    But... if the cops arrest a brown kid, even though they explicitly said that they're not profiling, they obviously are, because a few examples of bad behaviour from cops means that they're all obviously like that.


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