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PaperclipPerfector  16d ago (text post)   26621 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024

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So the Cybertruck explosion before the Trump hotel was done by an active duty green beret and big Trump supporter:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/las-vegas-cybertruck-bomber-matthew-livelsberger-was-a-trump-supporter-source/

The man suspected of being behind Tesla Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas was a “big” supporter of Donald Trump and voted for him in November, a senior law enforcement official tells the Daily Beast. The revelation tracks with old Facebook comments and what Livelsberger’s uncle, Dean, told The Independent about his nephew’s politics on Thursday. “He loved Trump, and he was always a very, very patriotic soldier, a patriotic American,” Dean said. “It’s one of the reasons he was in Special Forces for so many years.”

I guess he killed himself, and willingly tried to harm others, to show his disapproval of Elon Musk? [In the surveillance video the car before opens the car door moments before the explosion and on the right side you see a man fleeing. They were really lucky the CT with its steel frame is the worst car for a car bomb.]

I wouldn't have expected active duty special forces soldiers being mentally unstable enough to do suicide bombings. I guess it is futile to search for a rational explanation and meaning here, a rational soldier would simply plan to assassinate Elon Musk, but then a rational person wouldn't to something that violent and drastic in the first place.

If anyone here is familiar with the Shawn Ryan Show (ex SEAL/CIA operator who's clearly well connected in the special forces community), Shawn just posted that hes releasing an interview today with an associate (friend?) of Livelsberger. The associate received a manifesto from Livelberger and theyre going to go through it on his show.

I've been binging the SRS over the xmas break and as soon as i heard the Vegas guy was a green beret i knew he would cover this story - but this is quite an explosive turn of events if it turns out to be legit. At the very least, i suspect Shawn's interest in this is genuine and that its not just him hopping on a trend for clicks and views. We shall soon see if there is any meat here.

I haven't paid attention to new developments but are we sure this was an intentional explosion? The photo of the burnt out truck bed seemed to show that it wasn't even particularly full and some large fraction of the fireworks appeared to be bottle rockets from the video of the explosion (which would seem to be the worst kind of firework for this purpose).

Could be he was on the margin mentally had packed up a bunch of stuff for a new years bash in the desert (or a suicide in the desert?) and at the last minute decided to shoot himself in front of the Trump property? Could such a shot possibly set off flammables in the trunk?

I'm probably just grasping at straws in the face of the disjointed acts of a depressed or worse man.

Do we know in what conflict zone he worked in? If he was working out of a gulf state or Ukraine, it would significantly change what any political message he was sending if it was intentional.

Fireworks (and camping fuel) are generally not impact-sensitive explosives: shooting a box of fireworks will almost never set them off, and rupturing a camping fuel container is more bad because of the future risk of a flame. Lipo batteries (famously) Don't Like being punctured, so those are more plausible, but they're also placed very specifically on the bottom of the car electric vehicles for a variety of reasons, and I am hard-pressed to considered the sort of gymnastics necessary to intentionally bust the battery while gargling a bullet.

Maybe if he had something like Tannerite, which is impact-sensitive and sometimes used in celebrations, but the video going around isn't (thankfully!) a tannerite explosion.

Anything's possible, but it's a really unlikely answer.

An active duty special forces soldier that can't build a more destructive bomb? I'm not a fan of conspiracies but this doesn't smell right...

Supposedly the guy was a radar operator and the special forces community is making a big deal about improving cross training and dropping a lot of memes as a result.

Also look up what the Green Berets actually do it is probably not what you think.

I wonder if there's a covert operation to place misleading information about bomb-making on the internet to prevent would-be terrorists from acheiving their true potential. It seems like every wannabe terrorist has a bomb nowadays, but they never do any damage.

But special forces soldiers literally get training on how to make improvised explosives from commonly available chemical precursors, given that most of their job is training irregular paramilitaries in the third world.

I assumed that special forces are used to being given good, effective explosives for their ops and that one reason the damage was low was that this guy wasn't used to working with the inferior substitutes available to a civilian.

The special forces guide is public domain. Just about everything the government makes is.

https://archive.org/details/usa-tm-31-210-improvised-munitions-handbook

Wait, you can just download a book telling you how to make a bajillion types of improvised explosives? From the government? For free? What?

Why aren’t there more bombings?

If you look through the book, almost all the recipes in the book rely on nitrates or nitric acid. Those are the key to a large number of explosive chemicals. Those are pretty tough to get in large volume and will get you on the list of people who get regular visits from the ATF if you buy the small emounts often. It's possible to improvise nitrates from urine but that's a ton of work, which is why it's in the manual for people chosen for heroic levels of tenacity and mental fortitude.

Also detonators require substantial care in their manufacture and handling and are a pretty hard filter on making your own explosives.

There were hundreds of domestic bombings in the 1970s. It didn't seem to shake society that much. Very few deaths helped make it not too scary I suppose.

Bombings generally are caused by the mentally ill or organized groups. The former is bad at using training, the latter doesn't need it (and has the government stuffed up their ass looking to make sure they don't accomplish anything).

A big risk is the social contagion aspect though, once the ill became aware of a modality (like a well published manifesto loudly stating I found X instruction in Y location) they become good at using it.

The tricky bit is that mentally ill doesn't just include schizophrenia and depression, indeed much of this likely comes from those with personality disorders, and these people may not legible parse as mentally ill to the general population.

And then you have all the stuff the government has done to limit access to supplies of various things.

Most people don't want to bomb anyone. Oh, they may cheer for the Luigis of the world, but most people personally have more to lose from their current life than they would gain by bombing anyone. It's the only way peace ever works.

I guess. Everyone was making such a fuss over the Anarchist’s Cookbook and the possibility that LLMs might tell people how to make bombs, so I thought that the information would be much harder to obtain.

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I’m confident that I could make a better IED than than, albeit not one I would survive triggering(but this was a suicide attack). And this guy was a green beret.

Nah mate. He just bought high-grade fireworks. Any cheese-dick E-4 could have rigged a better IED. Reads like a protest immolation more than a terrorist attack.

The "inferior substitutes available to civilians" include gunpowder. And rigging ad hoc explosives really is Green Beret bread and butter.

From you, I will accept correction :)

Now they've released some of his statements, he referred to the plan as a "stunt".

I'm feeling good about the guess.

First off while it's easy to construct very destructive bombs have you thought they might have intentionally wanted to bomb to be only that destructive?

Well that doesn't help with disproving conspiracy, because it would be within the imagination of the conspiracy theorist that he was coerced to making the device and in a last act of heroism he intentionally built it less destructive. It is also a well known plot device in movies and TV-series ... eh.. so yeah, the western media is actually what feeds into the conspiracy theories.

Glad that im not the only who had that thought (I'm not a conspiracy-therosist I swear, just a cynic), contrast this with Tim McVeigh who'd just recently left active duty when he carried out his bombing.

Timothy McVeigh also had the benefit of operating before the Department of Homeland Security was a thing. Try buying thousands of pounds of ammonium nitrate nowadays without getting knock on the door.

is it possible to just stagger your purchases over a sufficiently long time period or have a large number of properties that have a legitimate need for ammonium nitrate then just start stockpiling surplus or use a combination of the above.

If you have a bunch of legitimate businesses that need it you would be ok, but you also probably aren't suicide bombing anyone. If you just stagger your purchases you are just extending your lead time on the cops - you won't get picked up in the "let's check out everyone who bought massive quantities of fertiliser at once" sweep, but you will get picked up in the "let's check out everyone who bought massive quantities of fertiliser period" sweep.

You could rob a legitimate business that needs lots of ammonium nitrate instead. Or rob an ammonium nitrate wholesaler.

Lol I stuck to just addressing the scenarios he brought up because I'm not sure it's a good move for us to knuckle down and figure out the best way to uncle ted in the modern world. But ehh we're probably already on a list somewhere. Stealing it in the states would be a bad move, HS has a team who clocks in every day to pray someone steals chemicals so they can do something productive for a change. You'd be better off getting a job at an AN wholesaler and skimming I think.

Getting a legitimate business needing ammonium nitrate was exactly what Breivik did though and that strategy worked just fine. You don't need to be rich or a genius to do this, but not being a moron seems like an almost impossible bar to clear for terrorists.

My pet theory is that Bin Laden was successful mainly because he managed to convince non-retards to do a suicide attack, and the only reason we're not seeing more such attacks isn't because of NSA / TSA / DHS and the rest of the alphabet soup that was rolled out in the aftermath of 9/11, but because most non-retards usually don't want to die (or kill, for that matter).

but not being a moron seems like an almost impossible bar to clear for terrorists

Most of these type of (seemingly) lone wolf events are more mental illness driven than anything else, which decreases the quality of the planning.

Not sure about the US situation, but in Canada it's actually pretty hard for anyone to buy AN fertilizer in decent quantities regardless of legitimacy -- AIUI the supply chain regulations are so strict now that not many companies are interested in producing/shipping/storing the stuff, so it's simply not available.

It sucks because it's a way more practical nitrogen fertilizer for moderate-sized cropland than the urea-based ones that you can still get (which happen not to be good for bombs) -- this may be regional though, I think some producers might still exist in the Southern US.

You still need a pretty active primer charge to set of ANFO however (a blasting cap for instance), which probably discourages run-of-the-mill terrorists from going this route -- one imagines that something like this would not be an impossible hurdle in the particular case of an active Army special-ops guy, but IWK anything about that.

urea-based ones that you can still get (which happen not to be good for bombs) -

False. Trust me on that. Making something with TNT strength from them is pretty straightforward. As in kids in highschool having 9th grade chemistry in Eastern Europe easy.

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Even so, knowing the difference between deflageration and detonation, and the steps to manage it is below the floor of even basic competence.

Internet autists also noticed this his passport was miraculously undamaged in the blast.

Is it a conspiracy? I doubt it. It's sufficiently retarded for me to think that it's probably real.

People mocked DNR militia reporting they found a Right Sector leader's calling card in a car they torched at their checkpoint in 2014 for years. Until the guy finally admitted that, yes, he actually was there and escaped from that car.

this was just his green beret training in action. he had to provide id to the rental service but its possible they may have rejected his military id or his passport so by carrying both he reduced the chance his operation may have been scuttled.

I once again am asking us to stop caring what literally insane people think about anything.

Much like Luigi, this is a person who clearly had a psychotic break. Looking for deeper meaning? Don't. There is no deeper meaning.

More concerning to me is how a former Green Beret can't even rig an improvised explosive device correctly and chose literally the worst possible vehicle to commit his terrorist attack.

chose literally the worst possible vehicle to commit his terrorist attack.

Terrorists choosing symbolism over efficacy is nothing new. If the point you're trying to make is that you think Elon Musk sucks, of course you're going to use a cybertruck, quite possibly the ugliest land vehicle ever designed.

Those things look like prop vehicles from Total Recall.

quite possibly the ugliest land vehicle ever designed

The Fiat Multipla would like to disagree. Everything about that car, no matter from what angle you look at, is wrong.

That must have been the inspiration for Dark Souls basilisks.

It's the car version of the skinny guy popping out of the bulky body builder.

Edit: it turns out, I don't know how to include links, but it's that body builder meme from years ago.

Okay, point taken, that is fucking hideous.

Just imagine if they had a baby.

Bleurgjh.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

One of the biggest copes in human history.

I think it looks cool.

To each his own.

Different people have different 'pinions; some like apples and some like inions.

I think it’s pretty worth looking into closely when it appears to be an actual ISIS cell within the United States Army Special Forces. This isn’t just some random loon who decided to pop off.

Sure. We should disrupt ISIS to the extent we can.

But I don’t care about who he voted for or his political philosophy. He is not a thinker. He is a lunatic.

More concerning to me is how a former Green Beret can't even rig an improvised explosive device correctly.

"We trained him wrong on purpose...as a joke."

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