I was referring to the presumption. Without bothering to look up any studies about it, I postulate that if we do not feel like we're under threat, we don't view others as inherently dangerous, and that the reverse is also true: when we feel that the world is an unsafe place, other people look threatening.

As for Hobbes ... Wikipedia implies that he had a rather unhappy childhood, and also that a number of his personal friends were either executed or forced to flee the country (he did) during the English Civil War, which happened right before he wrote Leviathan.

I think that's the human default. People I know who don't operate that way are almost universally people who've been hurt such that it feels safer for them to suspect everyone.

can it be a creek in California? we're still on water-use restrictions due to ongoing drought.

Somebody should do a study of women who have only ever been in one abusive relationship, divided into groups based on when they got out of it.

I dated a guy who was insecure and manipulative and jealous, and became increasingly controlling, which is when I dumped him. But I can totally see finding myself with a man who moved towards violence much faster, or whose unpredictability was part of his charm when he wasn't angry, or didnt' become violent until I tried to break up with him, or whatever. I mean, we've all dated assholes, and a lot of us have dated the kind of stalker-type who keeps texting you long after you dump him. But most of the women I know did this only once, in high school or college. After that jerks rarely get past the second or third date.

Maybe identifying dangerous creeps is learned rather than innate? It certainly seems to work better in groups, which is why our friends always want to meet (aka, pass judgement upon) our new sweetie.

sorry, I left out women who date abusive guys repeatedly because I don't think that's a failure to detect dangerous people. I think it has more to do with emotional problems than anything else.

On the other hand, there are people (like the BTK killer and Bernie Madoff) for whom everybody's danger-detectors fail. Sociopaths are frequently intelligent, charming, socially adept people; they just have no qualms at all about using others for whatever purpose suits them this week. Even though we think of them as classic serial killers like Bloody Larry (they do have a tendency to answer questions about "why did you do that" with statements like "why not?" or "because I could") but there's no actual evidence that most of them ever kill anybody. Studies HAVE shown that they do well in corporate America.

You know, as women when we get that He's Creepy vibe off someone, we're thinking about a scale that goes: insecure - jealous - abusive - rapist - ax murderer. We're not thinking: shooting spree. We don't date these people, but we don't call the cops on them either. It's not illegal to be a creepy asshole.

And I think for men (correct me if I'm totally wrong, gentlemen) when you get the feeling that "oo, that guy is going to hurt someone" you don't feel like you, personally, could ever realistically be threatened by him. Whereas women look at unknown men as potential assailants, you look at him and see that he's this nervous dude with poor social skills. You'd probably avoid getting in an elevator alone with him, but really? He's not a badass, he's that jerk from WoW. You're not thinking about shooting sprees either, you're thinking of something more personal, like a fistfight or slashed tires.

Part of that I think is that we primarily worry about people committing acts that we have thought of doing ourselves. Generally in a moment of rage or vindictiveness.  And for most of us, these emotions are personal: directed against individuals or specific institutions. When we see someone with rage issues, we think "he might hit someone with a baseball bat" because we've all had a moment of wanting to do that.  We think, "oo, if I was crazy and didn't care what happened to me, I'd totally hit that asshole with a baseball bat" and maybe we spend a few minutes fantasizing about whacking some jerk who truly deserves it and how satisfying it would be. But we don't actually, because that's what crazy people do.

We don't think about murdering a whole bunch of random people. That's a whole other level of pathological dysfunction that's a very alien mindset for normal humans. The military handles this by making the enemy non-persons; the trouble with this is that if you get it right it's very hard to turn off when the soldier goes home, and if you don't get it right the soldier goes home traumatized because he or she has been asked to display behavior and to cope with a situation that is not compatible with mental health and happiness.

That's because most criminals are really stupid. The best way to get away with murder in the real world is, from what I can tell, 1) don't be the victim's abusive husband, jealous boyfriend, or obviously deranged ex; and 2) don't tell anyone about it.

I think they're going to start with assumption that other people haven't touched the corpse, at least, because people who find a dead person in their hotel room tend to freak out, not poke it a few times and leave it there.  Their CSI people will start with the ever-popular theory that the boyfriend did it, and look for a way to tie him to whatever weapon was used to kill her. I don't see how this will be harder than any other case of domestic violence turned deadly. The article says the boyfriend was picked up for a weapons violation recently, so somebody's probably got his gun in an evidence locker.

well, ok. I spent a few days last week hanging out with a friend who's in law school, and apparently they spent a lot of time on this last semester.

...anyway, the bar is definitely not set nearly as low in the real world as it is on TV.  In reality-land, using illegally-acquired evidence to acquire legal evidence (or to justify shooting someone!) gets your case thrown out of court. Also, using illegally-acquired evidence in an otherwise lawful investigation is not the same as using illegally-acquired evidence to get someone murdered.

Well, the thing is, inventing evidence is actually a crime. And even if it could not be reasonably proven that she had done so, suspicion of such behavior is the sort of thing that ruins people's law enforcement careers, and even if she does get better, and even if Celentano does think about giving her a gun and a badge again, inventing evidence would come up as a(nother) reason not to reinstate her.

Maybe that's because she doesn't really react to him like an authority figure. She's going to talk back regardless, and he may as well go along with it rather than have an argument every single time.

Or maybe he's smart enough to realize (or learned the hard way) that arguing with Hafidha is worse than arguing on the internet. You can win an argument with Hafs, but then you risk getting into an If Hafidha Ain't Happy Ain't Nobody Happy scenario.

I think some of us want to view her as less guilty, and others more. And there's no real evidence either way, so unless the PTB jump in to tell us who's right, we can go on arguing as long as we want.

And if they do jump in there's no guarantee they'll tell us anything that can't be interpreted in at least 3 different ways. Because they do that.

You know what jumped out at me? Reyes grinning and Plotting Stuff and obviously pleased with himself that he can weird Todd out.* I don't think we've seen him do that kind of playful behavior in any of the present-day content.


*ok, that is quite an accomplishment.

I don't think she would have had to manufacture evidence. Just because there was no legal way for a law enforcement agency to do anything about him does not mean there wasn't any evidence of wrongdoing. It just means nobody could get a warrant on him, for whatever procedural reason. Evidence that would prompt violence against a child molester is not necessarily the same as legally-acquired evidence you could use in court. Deliberately publicizing illegally-acquired evidence (i.e., from a search that would have required a warrant no one had), knowing or suspecting it would get the accused person killed is the thing she wouldn't have done before.

I think she incited it by posting details of what he had done along with his home address.  Maybe she posted identifying details of his victims? This would easily be enough to prompt a parent of a victim -- or a previously-abused, emotionally volatile adult/teenager -- to go and attack him.

The time frame does seem suspiciously convenient, but I think she may have either assumed or already known that someone in the area was checking that site daily. Or she just knew that what she'd done would prompt someone to act, and didn't care when it happened. Or, you know: this is fiction. Maybe it happened within a few hours because it was necessary/convenient for the plot.

Chaz does say that he knew Hafs kept info on child molesters and other obviously bad people who couldn't be arrested for whatever reason (lack of legally actionable evidence seems like the mostly likely thing to me). And ... maybe she felt that this was her last opportunity to do anything about it. She went looking for the team, and she clearly expected Chaz to kill her.