Someone posted this on ssc with a warning about talking to cops, but really just marvel at what's going on here.

Aaronson manages to turn a story where he is briefly arrested for a theft (which he did commit on video!) into paragraphs and paragraphs of indulging in his persecution fantasies.

Zero empathy on display for the people he stole from, the people just doing their jobs, or reflection on the fact that it wasn't a simple little mistake anyone could make but rather... a fairly weird move? Do people usually put change in cups?

  • gerikson@awful.systems
    ·
    10 months ago

    Post is from 2018...

    Here's the HN discussion (he's a bit of a hero there)

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17717816

    Lots of people lawyering that taking from a tip jar isn't stealing as the money technically does not belong to anyone lol.

    • Evinceo@awful.systems
      ·
      10 months ago

      There's some actual gold in there

      If Aaronson was capable of respectful communication then when the smoothie person got angry at him he would have considered the possibility that the anger was warranted and he had done something wrong. And probably would have pretty quickly realized: "oh wait I'm putting down money on this tray that I just picked up money from... that doesn't make any sense." But instead he immediately jumped to: "there's something wrong with this smoothie shop worker" Everyone would have been saved a ton of grief if Aaronson had any respect for the people around him or any self awareness. But he has neither.

      a person who repeatedly fails to execute fairly simple tasks in an airport that is specifically designed to make everything as strait [sic] forward as possible is otherwise a very successful human.

      • maol@awful.systems
        ·
        10 months ago

        Another good comment:

        sounds like the officers didn't know that the amount taken was so small. From the post:

        After many more attempts to intimidate me, I was finally informed of the charge: “that smoothie place over there says you the stole cash from their tip jar.” Huh? How much? One of the officers returned from the smoothie bar, and said, a bit sheepishly: “they say it was $4.”

        So the most likely scenario was a comedy of errors. All the cops know is that the manager of the smoothie place ran up to them and said "that guy just robbed our tip jar!" They interpret this to mean he emptied out the entire tip jar, which would be a pretty brazen thing to do, so they roll up on him hard out of disgust that anyone would do such a thing. Then they talk to him and discover that what actually happened is that he absent-mindedly took $4. That's a very different class of violation, but it's not like they can take back the aggressiveness of their initial approach. The damage was done.

        In theory, the officers could have avoided the mistake by questioning the manager for more details before making the stop. Look at it from their perspective, though -- one of the people you're employed to protect is telling you that he's just been robbed, and if you futz around too long, the perpetrator gets on his plane and gets away with it. It's not surprising they would decide to stop the guy first and work out the details once they could be confident he wasn't going anywhere.

        But no, it's just that the world is against Scott. It's not just feminist bloggers from the early 2010s, it's the cops, it's everyone.