OUR PICKSThreshold of Violence | Pandemic & Disinformation | Cyberthreats to Health Industry, and more
· Threshold of Violence
· Why Disinformation Has Flourished During the Pandemic
· ISIS Operative in U.S. Plotted to Assassinate George W. Bush, FBI Alleges
· Only 22 Saw the Buffalo Shooting Live. Millions Have Seen It Since.
· Cyber Threats to Health, Education Sectors Increase with Ransomware, Limited Security Resources
· A Neo-Nazi Idea to Spark a Race War Inspired the Buffalo Killings
· What Is the ‘Great Replacement’ Theory and the Role It Played in the Buffalo Shooting?
· U.K. Government’s Counter-Terrorism Program Targeted Mainstream Rightwing Views as ‘Far-Right’ While Ignoring Islamist Extremism and Backing Groups That Promoted the TALIBAN, Says Bombshell Leaked Report
Threshold of Violence (Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker)
On February 2, 1996, in Moses Lake, Washington, a fourteen-year-old named Barry Loukaitis walked into Frontier Middle School dressed in a black duster and carrying two handguns, seventy-eight rounds of ammunition, and a hunting rifle. He killed two students and wounded a third before shooting his algebra teacher in the back.
School shootings are a modern phenomenon. There were scattered instances of gunmen or bombers attacking schools in the years before Barry Loukaitis, but they were lower profile. School shootings mostly involve young white men. And, not surprisingly, given the ready availability of firearms in the United States, the phenomenon is overwhelmingly American. But, beyond those facts, the great puzzle is how little school shooters fit any kind of pattern.
Why Disinformation Has Flourished During the Pandemic (Bob Yirka, Phys.org)
One of the more remarkable features of the global pandemic is the seemingly unceasing stream of misinformation attributed not just to the virus and the people who were being infected, but in the ways the medical community has responded to the threat. From ridiculous claims regarding supposed cures to the baseless claims made by anti-vaxxers, misinformation has flourished. Researchers have examined why this has been happening and they looked at the sources of news, both reliable and unreliable, as participants in a supply and demand news ecosystem.
ISIS Operative in U.S. Plotted to Assassinate George W. Bush, FBI Alleges (Tom Winter, Ken Dilanian and Pete Williams, NBC News)
The suspect allegedly traveled to Dallas in February to surveil Bush’s residence.
