Snow Days a Thing of the Past

In 2006, as a member of the school board, I created a post advocating Virtual Make-up Days.

Fourteen years later, the State of CT - thanks to a worldwide pandemic - has finally figured it out.

Someday learning will apply to teachers, administrators, and education bureaucrats as well.

Sol Pais, Semantic Tagging, and the Toxicity of Google Visual Search

This are the final observations I will offer about the Sol Pais history.

Before Sol Pais was found dead in the woods of Colorado, she came to my attention in some information streams I religiously monitor.  The authorities, according to these reports, were looking for her because of some mysterious connection to a Columbine anniversary.  I found the ambiguous nature of the evidence to be disturbing.  This country has far too many self-righteous vigilantes who shoot first and ask questions later for a young girl to be widely advertised to be a threat to a community perpetually "on edge".

Years ago, I had worked (as a Software Engineer) on the Homeland Security Information Network (HISN) that I suspected was used to communicate between Florida and Colorado authorities.  The more I read about this real-time manhunt, the more concerned I was about this woman's safety.

The other oddity about this event was the release of two photographs of Sol, one that made her look like a woman in her thirties and uncannily simulating a Patty Hearst ambiance.  I had a gut feeling she would not be seen alive again.

So, curiosity piqued, I started doing what I do well - research.  I took screen shots of the Sol Pais images and dropped them into Google search to see who she was aside from the shady pictures being published.  I didn't get the results I expected.

A picture search should, theoretically, return images that match the images you submit.  A picture of Sol Pais should have returned one of the many pictures of her I later found on numerous websites.  Instead what was returned were dozens of the same photos semantically tagged with Columbine, school threat, and so on.  And the rest of the photos returned were not young 18 year old girls but female killers and criminals.  The photo search was not comparing pictures but inferring semantic matches based on the tagging of the photos and the not the likeness of photos.  Furthermore, the photos released by the authorities and cloned in every MSM outlet were weighed to be given priority. Sol Pais may as well have been wearing a target on her forehead.

Given the ubiquity of this profile, Sol Pais was a marked target whose presumption of innocence was stripped from her systematically in multiple systems that were failing to ensure the veracity of the data being transmitted. To this day, from what I can puzzle together, I believe local Florida authorities twisted the words of a traumatized father to manufacture a nonexistent psychopath.  A sandbox psychopath that authorities in Columbine welcomed with open arms - target practice to satisfy a community on edge.

I continued to research the story for a few weeks after reports of her death.  My previous posts document what I found.  If she, in fact, committed suicide she should be recognized as a heroic figure.  Our society should be so lucky as to have suicidal individuals wander off somewhere and make decisions about themselves alone instead of inflicting violence to strangers.  Sol Pais is a tragedy and a study in our social mean but her image should have her semantic tags changed - updated for posterity as collateral damage.

I believe she did commit suicide - there's good evidence to that effect.  But there is also plenty of reason to fear for the health and welfare of anyone who gets caught in the pathological paranoia that is every community that has experienced a mass shooting.

Our systems no longer have a fail-safe mechanism to distinguish truth from lies and when government systems lie to MSM and Big Data search engines the result is a real-life terror that makes Black Mirror episodes seem tame.  Be afraid, be very afraid. 
 

Sol Pais: The Hypothermia Problem

According to Wikipedia, a person suffering from hypothermia who takes their clothes off is suffering from Extreme Hypothermia.

" In mild hypothermia there is shivering and mental confusion.^[2] In moderate hypothermia shivering stops and confusion increases.^[2] In severe hypothermia, there may be paradoxical undressing, in which a person removes their clothing, as well as an increased risk of the heart stopping.^["

Assuming this is true, why would authorities clear an area in which there was a report of a woman running around nude? 

The situation implies by its very nature to be a case of hypothermia that is life-threatening.  Clearing the area means reducing the chance of finding the person before they die of cold.  And assuming a fear of an armed Sol Pais not being *that* woman, are we to believe they thought Sol Pais had retreated to woodland she had zero familiarity with to ambush someone else as lost as she?

Because it is not unreasonable to assume that they might have believed it could likely be Sol Pais and if it was, clear the area, let her freeze to death, and their job made that much easier.

The New York Times reported [bolding my emphasis]:

"It was a tactical team from the Clear Creek County sheriff’s department that found Ms. Pais’s body, near Echo Lake, according to the sheriff, Rick Albers. According to the sheriff, Ms. Pais had taken a rideshare to a lodge by the lake.

At some point she had hiked about half a mile from the lodge, and then about 100 yards up a hill. She would have had to hike through snow to get there, somewhere between one and four feet deep, officials said. Clear Creek deputies found her by a stump, dead from a gunshot wound. She was in the same clothing the F.B.I. had reported her as wearing — boots, camouflage pants and a black shirt. She was also wearing a plaid jacket, and had a bag and a shotgun with her. Mr. Albers said that he did not know of any other guns found on her."

The massive manhunt for Sol Pais was resolved by locating the drop off point of the ride share and following the footprints up a hill nowhere near a school or publicly exposed area.

The story of the nude woman running around in the woods was false but it cleared the area. No one would bear witness to anything that went on.

The internet community as represented by Reddit was filed with assertions that Pais was nude, could not be suffering from Hypothermia, was mentally ill, and so on - virtually nothing resembling the reality of her isolation.

The Denver Post reported a far more detailed and accurate picture of Pais on the day she died.

"Florida teenager Sol Pais likely killed herself Monday evening on Mount Evans, never knowing that she was the target of a police dragnet more than 50 miles away or that her actions had incited panic as the 20th anniversary of Columbine approached, said the Clear Creek County undersheriff who led the search for the young woman on the mountain. 

Pais, who was from Miami, would have been on a remote mountainside without cellphone service, no car and lacking the gear to survive the brutal weather conditions. There were no credit card purchases or cellphone pings that would have indicated she left Mount Evans once a rideshare driver dropped her off late Monday afternoon. 

“She had no idea what occurred from late Monday afternoon to Tuesday when a search for her began and to Wednesday when her body was found,” Clear Creek County Undersheriff Bruce Snelling told The Denver Post. “The logical likelihood was she was here to end her journey.”

Snelling was part of a sheriff’s tactical team searching the mountain for Pais. They followed footprints in deep snow, interviewed the rideshare driver who took her to the area and talked to experts to try to understand her mindset. Eventually, they found her body, which appeared to have been dead for more than 24 hours, about three-quarters of a mile from Echo Lake Lodge."

and [bold letters are my emphasis]...

"Investigators had discovered Pais was infatuated with the Columbine shooting. An online journal she kept included sketches of one of the killers and of guns. Social media posts along with comments she made to others led the FBI to see her as a credible threat, Dean Phillips, special agent in charge of the Denver office, said Wednesday during a news conference. However, she never made a specific threat to a specific school, he said. 

As the FBI began tracking Pais’ whereabouts, agents also began informing local law enforcement that Pais was in the area and that she was armed. Hundreds of schools along the Front Range canceled classes Wednesday as the manhunt intensified. 

By the time a massive media campaign was unfolding, Snelling said, authorities had evidence that she was at Mount Evans with no means to come back to the city. 

The FBI provided the Clear Creek Sheriff’s Office with information that showed Pais was dropped off 56 miles west of Columbine High School at a pullout on Highway 103 at the base of Mount Evans in Clear Creek County. 

From that moment, the 18-year-old dressed in a black T-shirt and camouflaged pants was on foot, Snelling said. She had no tent, no sleeping bag and no coat. 

The Clear Creek Sheriff’s Office never received any evidence that Pais planned to use the shotgun to shoot others, Snelling said. 

“I had no direct information from the FBI that any of her writings indicated she would do a school shooting,” Snelling said. “She didn’t have a master plan.” 

But Jefferson County Sheriff Jeff Shrader, whose jurisdiction includes Columbine High School, said there was strong, generalized evidence that an attack was imminent. 

Because Pais bought a one-way ticket, purchased a gun and ammo, and expressed a fascination with Columbine, authorities had reason to be concerned, Shrader said. 

“A lot of that added up to give me quite a bit of concern,” he said. “Knowing what we knew — until her body was found — there was a belief of a general threat.” 

Even as schools began increasing security Tuesday afternoon, searches had begun in and around Mount Evans. 

Shrader sent the Jefferson County mountain team. The FBI sent a team, Snelling said. And Clear Creek deputies began searching at the top of Colorado 103 near the Echo Lake Lodge. 

Snelling interviewed the rideshare driver, who told him that he had dropped her off at a pull-out on Colorado 103 about 7 miles from Idaho Springs. Pais had told the driver she wanted to see snow, and the driver did not think that she appeared to be distraught or on edge. She got out of the car carrying a duffel bag and a gun case, Snelling said. 

Snelling said he consulted with an FBI agent who specializes in cold cases as well as a nationally recognized police psychologist to understand her possible mind-set. After those conversations, Snelling said he developed three theories about what Pais was doing: 

Pais could have traveled to Echo Lake Lodge to hide out or practice shooting but didn’t realize it was closed. Her cellphone didn’t work, so she was stuck in the wild. 

After visiting Echo Lake, Pais could have hitchhiked to Idaho Springs and then called for another rideshare to get back to the metro area and carry out a shooting. 

Or, Pais’ sole reason for flying to Colorado on a one-way ticket and heading to a mountain was because she intended to commit suicide. 

“She went dark,” Snelling said. “There was no digital footprint anywhere. No phone. No credit card use. To me, that pointed to a near impossibility that this ill-equipped, 18-year-old teenage woman would fly from sea level in Florida to Colorado and then go up into the mountains with plans to go on a killing spree. I believed the third scenario was the most likely one.” 

-snip- 

Almost two hours after their search began, deputies saw footprints veering off Resthouse Trail. 

“There was a little flat spot in the woods, and that’s where we found Ms. Pais,” Snelling said. “It was isolated and off the beaten path. It was peaceful. She was by a tree stump. Everything she had brought with her was in arm’s length of her. 

Pais’ body was still clothed in the same camouflage pants and black T-shirt, and she had a small duffel bag that contained two boxes of shotgun shells, he said. 

It snowed later Wednesday, and Snelling said he was thankful that deputies’ work had led to the discovery. Otherwise, Pais’ tracks could have been buried and could have prevented anyone from finding her body until summer. 

At the time of the discovery of Pais’ body, law enforcement and school officials were discussing shutting schools for another day. 

“What would today be like if we hadn’t found Ms. Pais?” Snelling said Thursday morning. “We would be operating under the umbrella of fear with the Columbine anniversary approaching.” 

When Pais’ body was found, there was a simultaneous sense of relief and sadness, Shrader said. 

Snelling described the same feelings. He was proud that his team had found Pais and ended the panic and chaos along the Front Range. 

“In the waning hours, I was struck by how sad it was,” Snelling said. “This poor, mentally ill girl needed help and probably never got it.”

The plaid "jacket is what she was wearing at the airport.  She was also wearing black pants that look nothing like camouflage and an Alice in Chains t-shirt.     The description of the authorities, even after her death, implies a far more threatening profile than the reality.

The point of this exercise is that it was the "massive media campaign" that provoked the panic and hysteria more than anything Sol Pais had in any way provoked.  And while the sanity of Sol Pais was and is continually questioned, it is the sanity of the Columbine survivors and their neighbors that must also be considered questionable.

The rhetorical paranoia obvious in this Jefferson Couty Officials press conference should make everyone uncomfortable.

The presumptions about "outsiders" visiting the area are haunting and threatening in themselves.  Yes, bad things can happen but when public officials address public profiling as potentially 'evil', we may be crossing a very dangerous crossroad.

Sol Pais: The Two Boxes of Ammo Mystery

One of the curiosities of the Sol Pais suicide was that she purchased two boxes of ammunition for the shotgun.  Before 8chan was scrubbed, that community thread debated this anomaly.

If she intended to commit suicide (which she actually did), why buy two boxes of ammunition.

I have a new, recent theory about this based on a comedy sketch by Dave Chappelle that aired on Netflix.  In it he describes going to a gunstore to buy a shotgun for self protection and asking the gun shop owner for advice.  The gunshop owner grabs two boxes of ammunition from the case because that's what is usually bought.

My theory is that Sol Pais was confronted similarly and not wanting to look naive, bought one box of each.

Here's Chapelles skit - IMO, its compelling.

Sol Pais: Camouflaged for Suicide?

I've written on this subject before when it concerned the killing of Tamir Rice.  And the subject is the allegation that a suspect who has not yet committed a crime is dressed in camouflage clothing.

In the case of Sol Pais, the authorities alleged that she was dressed in camouflage.  Now this may seem like a minor point but the authorities in Colorado had evacuated schools based on the fact that a 5'6" 18 year old who was painfully thin had purchased a shotgun.  The shotgun purchase was wholly a legal transaction. And a shotgun, while a weapon that can kill in the hands of someone who was proficient enough to load, point, aim, and shoot it, is not an automatic, high capacity weapon.

Did I mention that she was a high school student in Florida unfamiliar with Colorado climate?

Sooo.

The question remains why the authorities who lost track (and we'll soon circle back to this rather dubious claim) of Pais - presumably for days after arriving in Colorado would claim she was dressed in camouflage when she was wearing a black heavy metal group T-shirt, black shoes and black designer camouflage pants at the airport.

Are we to believe this outfit would disguise her as something other than who she was - a short, slightly built eighteen year old? One would think that any teenager of this description would blend in at a high school regardless of what they were wearing.

Now, don't get me wrong, a teenager carrying a shotgun into school would be the giveaway, again - regardless of what they were wearing.

But Sol Pais was not traveling to Colorado to visit a high school. She was there to commit suicide.  You don't need ineffective, fashionista camouflage to do that.   And out in the snowy forest, how could that outfit camouflage her no matter what her motivations were.

No, the truth is that when authorities smear descriptions such as this on subjects they are ratcheting up the ante.  Police who might otherwise approach her calmly will approach her with apprehension and a reflexive trigger-finger.  Likewise its plausible deniability for every wannbe Batman or Wonder Woman to shoot first and ask questions later if they go bounty hunting.

I have yet to find an official autopsy or postmortem for this tragedy - it appears to be getting whitewashed.  That's too bad. There are lessons to be learned.

Sol Pais: The Fabricated School Threats

The major search engines are no longer dependable repositories of objective information.  For the most cynical critics this observation is not new but in my experience there was a time when an individual could search the web and find all kinds of alternative interpretations of newsworthy information.

In researching Sol Pais's suicide and the events leading up to it, I've had to slog through an ocean of disinformation lucratively distributed by the Main Stream Media as its dictated by government officials who fabricate it for public consumption. The MSM reports this fiction seamlessly and without question.  And now Google and the mainstream search engines and social media sites comply as well.

The narrative that is almost ubiquitously coughed up when searching anything having to do with Sol Pais is that she threatened schools.

Dark as these times may be to compare various sources and opinions about information, there are always cracks in the cyber censorship model.

In this news report, information missing or obfuscated by the broader MSM is yet uncensored;

""Columbine and other schools tightened security the afternoon of April 16 and closed entirely on April 17 when authorities still had not located Pais. She never threatened a specific school, authorities said. 

Her body was found on April 17 in the foothills west of Denver. Authorities knew Pais was last seen in the area on April 15 but it was unclear when she killed herself until the coroner’s report Wednesday. 

“Based on the information we had at the time, local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, in conjunction with school districts in the Denver Metro area, took the necessary steps to ensure our communities, and particularly our students, stayed safe until there was no longer a threat,” Jefferson County Sheriff Jeff Shrader said in a statement. 

An FBI spokeswoman declined comment Wednesday."

In fact, Pais never threatened any school or individual.  This is precisely why FBI spokespeople refuse to speak.  It is far more advantageous to allow the innuendo that Pais threatened a school or schools to float around on social media than to truthfully admit that this was a precautionary, cover-your-worthless-government-ass speculation.

Later, the same article notes,

"An autopsy summary by the Clear Creek County coroner estimated that 18-year-old Sol Pais likely died on April 15 — the day authorities said she flew to Denver from Miami. The FBI’s Denver office said it learned of Pais’ travel the following morning. Agents also learned the day after she died that Pais had gone directly to a gun store from the airport and purchased a shotgun and ammunition. 

Pais was already dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound by the time agents began retracing her steps, according to the coroner’s initial autopsy findings. 

Chief Deputy Coroner Harriet Hamilton said Wednesday that the office is awaiting test results before producing a final autopsy report. 

The gun purchase and other warning signs, including Pais’ past conversations about the 1999 Columbine shooting, led the FBI and local law enforcement to consider the young woman a potential threat to schools and issue a public warning about her, authorities have said."

Had Sol Pais threatened a school in any way a voice recording of that threat would exist.  I have yet to encounter any such thing.  To be specific, such a recording would be, as we say in the legal vernacular, "empirical proof" - "evidence", "motive" - more than just plain old bullshit.

The so-called "threat" was an imagined threat to a community whose psychological well-being is in worse shape than its many cult tragedy tribes.  I'll delve into this subject in a later post.   The authorities and post-traumatically-stressed community figures project their fears into opportunities like this.  The recipe is simple - mention Columbine, visit the area, ask about or buy a gun legally and spark a conversation with a local.  Instant crisis.

Here's a copy of the "public warning":

You will notice the No Probable Cause to Arrest heading. You will also notice "considered armed and dangerous" - again based on the infatuated with Columbine School shooting semantic tag that they assigned to her identity.

These kinds of public warnings expose the individual to potential vigilante justice while dog whistling to the authorities that the media by-product of such a warning will trigger a social encounter that will justify terminating the subject's life.

And given this kind of warning, what could  local officials conclude other than emptying the schools?  The confluence of the expectation of violence on the anniversary of the Columbine shootings, the mischaracterization of misguided souls such as Sol Pais, and the hair-trigger, over-reaction by the Columbine community toward even the faintest hint of local interest is a recipe for collateral damage every anniversary period.

The actual autopsy results are yet to be made public.  Nor has any official postmortem analysis of the event been publicized.

I Got an Idea, Let's Split Up!

Audiences never groaned often enough toward the end of grade 'B' scare movies when the individuals who remained alive during the killing spree came to the conclusion that they should "split up".  We all knew how that would work out.

In recent years there have even been product promotions making fun of the meme. Just a little something to keep in mind...


Over the decades of mass shootings, American schools have been hardened to become fortresses that could thwart violent invasion by one or more lunatics.  There are cameras that can count the pimples on student's cheeks, secured entrances and exits, one-way glass, and so on.

Now, its true that the security officers in any given school may be nothing more than a retired lady or gentleman who isn't intimidating anyone.  Still, its more than nothing.

Furthermore, the entire staff at schools and many businesses are trained in survival techniques - hiding, sheltering, and much more.   The most critical advice involves the question of fight or flight.  This is not a decision that is to be taken lightly and a healthy feedback loop of information - one would think - will include the risk involved in taking a stand.  After all, the concept of "Can I win this fight" - "What are my chances of survival" - and other such considerations come in -cough- handy.

I think you can sense where I'm going with this line of reasoning.


I think its fair to say that the Sol Pais example richly illustrates how fucked up law enforcement has become in protecting citizens, in accurately identifying the problem, in covering up their compounded stupidity, and in, far too often, aggravating already bad situations into total cluster fucks of incompetence.

Let's peel the onion together.

Sol Pais was a 5'5" (65") tall high school student who bought a shotgun to kill herself with.  That information was telegraphed in plain english for any intelligent human being to see.  And we know the authorities saw it before the rest of us did.

She wasn't intending to attack a school or anyone other than harm herself.  She wasn't buying easily concealed automatic weapons or even heavy artillery long guns.  No.  I mean if she wanted to attack anywhere, she would have done *that*.  After all, she probably never shot a gun of any kind in her life - she spent her time in her room, depressed listening to death metal music, and she curated a website pretty much dedicated to it.  She certainly wasn't at the shooting range. And she certainly wasn't trying to sneak into a school with an obviously difficult-to-hide shotgun given her stature.

So when the authorities circulated a photo that made her look like a thirty year old crack addict, machine-gun momma they were not only wrong, they were causing a panic in Denver.  Furthermore, they claimed she was insane because her father (drinking the official kool-aid) said there must be something wrong with her.  The complete context of this exchange is yet to be pieced together.

So.  Circling back to our previous thoughts about fight or flight - people in the area had no reason to believe it was not riskier to fight than flee if it came to that.  It seems to me that the public should expect a more comprehensive profile than that.

By now the parents were crawling up the asses of the authorities to do *SOMETHING/ANYTHING*!  And so they did.  The authorities quietly panicked.  They not only dismissed Columbine but schools all over the area - because, hey, you can't be too careful.

Right?

Right??

Of course that meant instead of being locked down in a protected fortress students were sent home in unprotected school buses that clogged traffic lanes and neighborhood streets. Had an actual shooter or shooters been loose, these targets would have been easy pickings.  Or malls congested with congregating teenagers.

Genius.



First draft.




.

Sol Pais WAS NOT Obsessed by Columbine AT ALL

I spent this evening examining Sol Pais's journal on her website.

The journal consists of 61 pages curated by Sol to be discovered after her suicide attempt [keep in mind she might have been assassinated first]. The reference to potentially have been killed by someone other than her own hand will be dealt with in a separate blog entry.

There is not a single reference to Columbine in any of it. NOT A ONE.

There is not a single reference to killing anyone other than herself anywhere in the journal.

There is not a single drawing of anyone associated with Columbine or any other such event anywhere in the journal.

There is not even a temporal overlay to suggest she had any awareness of Columbine at all.  Columbine happened before she was born.  If she had been exposed to something that fascinated her, not a single link on her quite sophisticated website even hints an interest.  Any fair reading of her journal is compelling eveidence that she would not have been shy about it.

The authorities are demonizing and slandering this young woman's reputation.

She was never a threat to anyone.  She was gifted and brilliantly suicidal. She was not mentally ill in any criminal sense of the terminology.

She was a tortured soul who found solace in Death Metal music and lyrics.  Its often difficult to disambiguate her words against the fabric of lyrics from songs that express her feelings. The journal, taken as a whole, is an American Post-Modern mantra that gives the Tibetan Book of the Dead a run for its money.

Sol Pais, much like a terminal patient with something to leave behind, speaks privately what she cannot express in her day to day life.  The doctored photograph of her face covered is a classic metaphor for those who might bellow, "I have no mouth and I must scream!"

Sol Pais could not reconcile her existence.  Its a terrible self-knowledge she agonizes with on page after page.  She, like everyone who commits suicide, welcomes an end.  Its not something most of us can understand or accept but it is real.

The only indication she gives of why she feels an outsider is expressed on page 29, dated 6/29/18. She feels an outsider in an [oppressively] liberal high school.  Her rant could well be a meme for anyone who is intelligent and forced to witness the masses at work.

The agony of Sol Pais as a conservative student in a liberal school should serve as an important milestone for all of us.  The current political climate is adversely affecting generations of youth who may be as ready to check out of this world as engage it. 

We can't "woke" the dead.


Her suicide was planned and she would do it in the woods of Colorado.  She drew both the shotgun she would buy and a landscape that was her destination accurately looking like the woods of Colorado.  This illustration is on page 24 no date but sandwiched between 6/18/18 and 6/21/18.

The shotgun shows up on page 35 dated July 14, 2018.  I need to triangulate this to the correspondence about acquiring guns in Colorado by someone also using DissolvedGirl as an avatar.  Dissolved Girl is a sub-genre rock song that could be used by many fans of the music.

The journal pages are sequential and occasionally dated.  The illustrations circulated by authorities appear before page 5, dated May 27, 2018.

The illustration being sold as a Columbine shooter is in fact a man holding a large book.  We know that because Sol practiced drawing the book just to the left of the character who could be a priest, rabbi, speaker, or fantasy movie figure (see illustration).  Of course if what you are trying to sell is the Columbine myth, books are dangerous weapons.

It is on page 11, sandwiched between May 27, 2018 and June 17, 2018.






This is a second, updated, draft, I'm pressed for time but I'll flesh this out even more.


My warning falling on deaf ears and now obsolete but preserved for reference...

April 22, 2018 - New suspicious activity and assertions by the Cult of Columbine authorities is that Sol died wearing a guerrilla camouflage outfit.  This woman was committing suicide not honing her skills as a sniper using a shotgun.  There is a nasty cover-up being perpetrated here.

The Social Media Fabric that Swallowed Sol Pais

Invitational disclaimer:  Years ago, I had much more free time to spend investigating topics of special interest The best I can do is offer educated speculation that I hope provokes and stimulates attention and goodwill discussion of the topics at hand.  I'm more than happy to be proved wrong.  That's a long way of saying the you're welcome to complement anything you read here with comments, criticism, or your own writing elsewhere.

As of this writing we are still debating the ebbing tide of concern about fake news. Fake news, for the most part, is information that is widely distributed to distort the reality of political events. Fake news isn't exclusive to politics but that's where it garners the most attention.

I became aware of the Sol Pais story on Thursday, April 18. When I started looking for information it seemed to have appeared whole cloth - Sol Pais was imitating the Columbine shooters, the FBI was looking for her, she was dead, and here's all the corroborating evidence she deserved to die. Boom.

The story didn't develop from one event to the other. Mostly, its over. back to Mueller and Russia, and Trump-hate news.

Burp.

I am blessed and cursed by sensing patterns. And nothing about the news reports, before or since, strike me as anything but empty echoes by law enforcement that rationalized their hunting down of Sol Pais.  The closer I look, the more I distrust everything being asserted about this teenager.

I first wrote about the subject of "swatting" back in 2014.

A more recent example involved gamers. 

There's not only a pattern emerging, but an escalation.

The Pais narrative smells like the next step.  The authorities, acting on a tip, somehow don't act fast enough to detain this girl for questioning long before she flies to Denver and [allegedly] buys a shotgun, and somehow is found dead after wandering around in the woods.

Take that in for a minute.  AND!  AND! they have a trove of [laughably preposterous] back story about her and her [imagined] destination and intentions.

The question for me, aside from the lack of any hard facts or objective analysis of the information at hand, was and continues to be - has the law enforcement community incorporated "swatting" as a tool in their arsenal of plausible deniability in exterminating suspects without the presumption of innocence, without warning, and without subsequent consequence.

When information is weaponized in this way, its not fake news - its more like propaganda on steroids - it pushes emotional response buttons in its intended audience.  This incites an agency in that public cohort to eliminate the discomfort.

When that cohort is an intolerant, vigilante organization then the response is the equivalent of throwing meat into a tank of hungry piranha.

The public is looking away from Sol Pais's death - believing the cover stories - secure in the knowledge that it was justified.  The tsunami of official terror porn has done its job.

But what if it wasn't an inside cover-up?

An even more disturbing is the distinct possibility, Pais was swatted by a zealot from a special interest group whose myopic interpretation of art, or interest, or objection to opinion or comment triggered outrage.  That outrage manifested in licensing a swat killing of the offending party.

The trajectory of this kind of violence and rational to violence will not end with Pais.  If Americans are concerned about hackers participating in politics online, what happens when one of those hackers or political operatives decides to target a politician, or their family, or their sponsors? This is a slippery slope covered in blood.

These anonymous tips need to be vetted.  They need transparency, and they need to be evaluated by even tempered analysts. That is clearly not the case today.

The tools to unravel this sequence of alarm and violence is readily available.

We need an accurate timeline of events - actual classic news.  Who, what, Where, When...

And then it gets interesting.

Ruminations on the Credible Innocence of Sol Pais

The bizarre story of the hunting and death of Sol Pais fit a pattern I've written about before and that continues to play out with predictable inevitability.  The pattern I'm speaking of is the use of sometimes over-eager or paralyzed by fear law enforcement officials to "swat" an unsuspecting victim.

The deadly game starts with an anonymous tip that someone/somewhere has or may have a weapon and the tipster is "just doing their duty" to report that maybe/just maybe they are a threat to the general public.  The consequence is almost always tragic for the unsuspecting target.

In this case, an eighteen year old honors student is dead. Based on the sketchy and preliminary information I can gather, I think this may be a case of wrongful death.

The fabric of our contemporary American civilization needs to be carefully reconsidered.  The preposterous "evidence" promoted by the authorities is little more than a thimble full of dross.  The subsequent social media dissemination of this nonsense serves as a cautionary tale that journalism is broken, social media search engines are corrupt, and our social media society is psychologically being programmed to kill, destroy, or maim by proxy.

I'll be writing about the details of these issues as I have time.  Yesterday, Good Friday, I spent some time privately discussing the possibility of raising the Julie Group from the ashes of a long hiatus.  The investigative work that needs to be done includes substantiating source of truth material. Virtually everything that has been publicized is either hearsay, innuendo, or a cover-up to justify a manhunt that could only end in tragedy.  If government officials have gone rogue, we are all in deep trouble.

An accurate timeline of events is critical. Confirming the veracity of Ms. Pais's notebook, website content, email correspondence, geo-location evidence and so on is critical.  There's more that must be discussed confidentially.

Law enforcement has not only sold the public on a de facto guilt of this young woman but are compounding that mistake by broadening their investigation into her friends and associates.

There are real problems with this myopic approach. If Ms. Pais was lured into some kind of entrapment scheme, her friends and associates may also be. If there are official bad actors involved, they need to be dismissed.  The FBI should have a strong incentive to assign an internal affairs investigation into what's going on.

My own investigative sense has raised a concern antithetical to my personal politics. The initial "tip" may have come from an anti-gun advocate or vigilante group. I'll attempt to examine these possibilities later in detail.

However, the possibility exists that Pais, upon legal purchase of a firearm in the vicinity of Columbine, provided all the personal identification required for a misguided local to call in a self-serving tip to Florida police.

Given the school-shooting tragedies in Florida and the subsequent gun reform mobilization, Pais may have run afoul of political correctness regarding these issues  prompting a retaliatory anonymous tip.

Another possibility is that her family, being from Argentina [based on MSM reports], may have been targeted by an anti-immigration group.

Or maybe the tip was legitimate.

It's important to establish the facts for obvious reasons.

Educational Fraud, You Need Not Look Far

Today, Valerie Strauss of  the Washington Post reports on a set of fraud cases that are but the tip of an iceberg in secondary education.

This has long been one of my special interests as the undeserving leap-frog the deserving systemically with open eyes and welcoming hospitality.

A few years ago, a fellow BOE member once whispered to me, "So what if her Dad gave her a helping hand, why not!"

Here's an excerpt from the Post,

"Following are excerpts from the explosive 204-page criminal complaint charging more than 30 wealthy people — including Hollywood actors and college coaches — in a years-long scheme to bribe and cheat to get their children into exclusive colleges and universities.

The Washington Post story on the complaint says:

The alleged crimes included cheating on entrance exams, as well as bribing college officials to say certain students were coming to compete on athletic teams when those students were not in fact athletes.

The criminal complaint paints an ugly picture of high-powered individuals committing crimes to get their children into selective schools. Among those charged are actresses Felicity Huffman, best known for her role on the television show “Desperate Housewives,” and Lori Loughlin, who appeared on “Full House,” according to court documents.

[FBI accuses wealthy parents, including celebrities, in college-entrance bribery scheme]

According to the criminal complaint, the schools targeted included Georgetown University, Stanford University, UCLA, the University of San Diego, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas at Austin, Wake Forest University and Yale University.

The complaint says that many of the children involved did not know what their parents had done to get them into school."

I think that list is short a school or two.

The system remains gamed to favor the sons and daughters of entitlement, privilege, wealth, and political pull.  Critics of educational reform usually have a vested stake in this game.  These occasional speed bumps will do little to change it.


 

The Tech in Schools Debate

"In a recent NPR report, writer Anya Kamenetz notes that clinicians are debating whether technology overuse is best categorized as a bad habit, a symptom of other mental struggles (such as depression or anxiety), or as an addiction."

From:  https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-02-07-former-google-design-ethicist-relying-on-big-tech-in-schools-is-a-race-to-the-bottom

Unschooling American Education

When I was in college, I became a fan of the de-schooling authors and followed their work enthusiastically.  John Holt, Ivan Illich, Paulo Friere, and others found a warm place on my bookshelf.

Some 50 years later, those concepts have evolved.

see: http://reason.com/reasontv/2019/01/24/these-unschoolers-say-children-dont-need

Carnegie Mellon Releases Free High School Computer Science Curriculum

https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2019/january/cmu-launches-high-school-computer-science-curriculum.html

Goodbye 2018

Since letting go of the School Board position I've turned my attention elsewhere.  I just noticed I had no new posts for the year and that didn't seem right.

This year I've discovered that inexpensive online learning is very good stuff.  I took a Udemy course for $10 and it was worth every penny.   

Beware the Entitled and Entitling Parents

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/24/opinion/rich-parents-hurt-schools-economic-segregation.html

SKAM

This should be of interest to everyone:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/06/18/skam-the-radical-teen-drama-that-unfolds-one-post-at-a-time

Twelve Years, So Much Time, So Little Progress - A Postmortem

After twelve years on the Board I decided not to run again.  With the recent election I'm no longer a Region 19 Board member but I've been offered the opportunity to continue participating on the EO Smith High School Building Committee as a citizen participant. Having attended all of the previous architectural studies and proposals for the school is some institutional knowledge that I'd like to keep alive for at least the short term.

I also plan on keeping the blog alive. I haven't written much lately but when I get the urge, I get the urge.

For twelve years I spent my energies in advocating for the students, the taxpayers, and the soul of the institution. And not blindly.  *Everyone* associated with public education has an agenda. To the degree that I could contribute to good things that were accomplished, it was to the credit of a coalition of the willing and they know who they are.

The establishment of the Reynolds, Big Picture inspired satellite program, the realization of an artificial turf sports field (I had advocated for all the fields to been renovated), the establishment of "Bring Your Own Device" internet access, and a few more Board stretch goals were largely the work of Bruce Silva, Lou DeLoreto, and a handful of Board members who rolled up their sleeves.

I mention these things because two of the three mentioned are NOT the way the system typically works.  In fact the system is hardwired to self-insulate itself from anything innovative or different.

This bears some explanation because most of the critical rhetoric of public schools will condemn the institution for being dysfunctional.   In my experience that simply isn't true. Public education is a highly evolved set of self-serving ecosystems that complement each other's comfort zone so as to eliminate every and all outside disruptive influence. Rather than being dysfunctional, these ecosystems are highly refined and ruthlessly efficient.

Obvious and self-evident as it sounds, schools should prepare students for a life of learning, constant change and reexamination of the status quo. And public school teachers and administrators exercise a vernacular of words and phrases that sound exactly as if this is what they do. But the fact of the matter is that they cannot do for students what they cannot do for themselves.  One of the last things an administrator said to me at my last meeting was, "This place isn't built for change."

The teacher's Unions, the administrative unions, the local Boards of Education, the State Board of Education, the commercial education interests, the lobbyists, the status quo parents of college track students, and the armies of sub-professional employees all act in the interest of the system. The system being a paper mill that certifies public school seat time. The system prefers being a monopoly.

Is there anyone out there who would not roll their eyes when someone mentions that "a fox should not be allowed to guard the henhouse"? Yet in education, most School Boards are populated by former teachers, teachers from a district away, vested interests, government unionists, and  so on. School Boards negotiate personnel contracts, curriculum, and much more.  Board members who don't fit that profile are considered incompetent outsiders. You're expected to be a fox to know a fox.

These days I think that public school alternatives may be the only thing that can save humanity.  The public schools need competition.

Congratulations Betsy DeVos

Now do something about this stuff: http://region19.blogspot.com/2010/06/random-stuff.html

Miracle at the Connecticut State Education Department - Somebody Woke Up!

This news was unreported and buried by Connecticut's MSM. CT News Junkie seems to be a sole source.  This is the kind of news the State government wants to keep buried. Business as usual. Hide the racism.  Hide the incompetence.Let's all be polite because that's what its all about.

I've been watching Connecticut do everything in its power to ignore, slow, and kill any attempt at closing a racial and class divide that keeps generations of children and young adults on a treadmill to early death, povrty subsistence, or a life in prison. We don't call it that.  We call it an education gap.  the gap being that the poor and urban populations of color must understand that there's nothing here for them - no college track, no snowflake, entitlement  treatment - no future except that their children will rinse and repeat this same cycle.

So yeah, a miracle of sorts happened. A State of Connecticut Board member aroused from a bureacratically induced coma;

State Board of Education member Malia K. Sieve listened for close to an hour Wednesday as her fellow board members and professionals in the field discussed Connecticut’s disappointing results on a well-known nationwide science test.She listened to speakers and watched slide-after-slide on an overhead projector of other states surpassing Connecticut in the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress science assessment.< She listened as some said the “good news’’ was that the achievement gap between minority and white students has shrunk since the last testing period in the state.
When she finally spoke up, her words captured the full attention of her fellow board members.“I’m so fired up, not in a good way,” Sieve said. Sieve is a director at HCM Strategies where her full-time job is to work with institutional leaders on education policy. “I’m tired of us all talking so politely,” Sieve said. What the test results clearly indicate, Sieve said, “is we do a better job with one population. We’re doing a whole lot better by our white kids.”Apologizing for getting emotional, Sieve went on to say that, “We act like if we talk politely — it will all be fine.”But by doing that it means “we have not decided that we have to do anything differently yet,” Sieve said. Sieve’s passionate words came after a presentation about nationwide science tests taken by fourth and eighth graders in 2015 that showed Connecticut is falling behind other states, though Education Department Chief Performance Officer Ajit Gopalakrishnan and Renee Savoie, an education consultant, termed the state’s performance as “stagnant.’’

Yeah, "stagnant" is one way of putting it. Maliciously racist might be another. we've been engaged in this dance of irresponsibility for many, many decades.  The State Board of Education has been as worthless a bureacratic body as any in government. Hickups such as this one are a rarity and as you an see, you'll never hear about them unless you look hard.

Truth is that the high stakes testing is a lousy metric for evaluating our schools.  CT is mired in the Orwellian double-speak OF No Child Left Behind and all its draconian successors. All these programs dumb-down educational experiences for kids, Even by this poor metric iyt becomes obvious that CT schoolchildren can be reduced to incompetent parrots when subjegated to generations of comformity indicing brainwashing.

"Stagnant". Brain-dead is closer to the truth.  Malooy needs to flatten these organizations and repeal all the idiotic legislation that has so poisoned the system that we no longer recognise it. making it all go away is the best remedy for this nonsense.