Well this is interesting

I wonder if they routinely go to movies to assess potential dire threats to God, country, and the American way.:roll_eyes:

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Dire threats to God?

Wow.

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God does seem very easily threatened, for an immortal being.

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An interesting piece that properly delves into the history of prayer and football:

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I really enjoyed reading that, but yikes, just when I thought I couldnā€™t find tackle football any more alienatingā€¦

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A great read on a classic.

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I donā€™t know if this is the right place for this, but it is interesting, if pretty dark:

https://believermag.com/the-end-of-evil/

Contains some detailed descriptions of the Bundy murders, so be forewarned. And itā€™s long, but a good meditation on the notion of evil and psychopathy, and why that might be problematic.

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Hm. Parts of this go against Hunting Humans, which looks at serial killing from a sociological point of view.

The author of that book agrees with this author that serial killers are generally not psychopaths. One thing the article misses that Hunting Humans includes is the view that serial killers are products of the society they live in. The article gets into that a little, seemingly inadvertently, when it describes that at first the police didnā€™t believe the missing women were in any real trouble, but then seems to shy away from the implications of that.

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Well, but I thought she was trying to get at that, though? You didnā€™t get that from her? I suppose she doesnā€™t come right out and say that, but I thought especially the part where women arenā€™t listened to and believed is part of what sheā€™s trying to do here.

Do you think instead sheā€™s saying itā€™s mental illness thatā€™s the problem, not pyschopathy?

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The last third especially, she seems to be saying psychopathy is a meaningless diagnosis (more than seems to, she says other people have told her that many times). She also reports Bundy exhibited non-psychopathic traits, which is supposed to, I donā€™t know, show Hareā€™s definition is wrong?

But that all assumes Bundy was a psychopath. And by all accounts he wasnā€™t.

In Hunting Humans and elsewhere, itā€™s pointed out that serial killers are found regularly in only a handful of countries, the US, Canada, UK, and Australia being the major ones. That points to sociology, not psychology.

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Never thought of that. Interesting. I can see why the US is on the list, what with our extreme ā€œIā€™m the only one that mattersā€ sensibility.

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Didnā€™t the Green River killer think the police should be killing sex workers, and if they wouldnā€™t, he would? Of course the police would look the other wayā€¦

Is there a general overlap with acceptance of exterminationist violence, but barriers to organized genocide? (barriers that are coming down, with the Trump admin engaged in ethnic cleansing, and accepting deaths as an acceptable part of the process.)

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Does the English language create serial killers? :cold_sweat:

But seriously, itā€™s more than a handful of countries. Hereā€™s a list (interestingly, going back as far as Gilles de Rais and Elizabeth BĆ”thory)

I suspect that one factor is the ease of being anonymous, which would make large cities, with many opportunities for being a self-sufficient loner, natural hunting grounds.

Also, the numbers may be influenced by the effectiveness of policing in any given country, since police first have to be alert for the possibility of a serial killer, and connect the dots to link individual cases.

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But ā€œfound regularlyā€ is an important factor. Germany has had some, but not nearly as many as other countries. Ditto Ukraine.

South Africa is a good point. I think it got left out of the global stats for a long time.

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Remember the BTK Killer was married and an active member in his church. Ted Bundy had girlfriends. Jeffery Dahmer left victims in his apartment while he attended family gatherings.

Serial killers hunt alone, but they are often not loners.

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Germany and France have long lists in the article, much longer than Canadaā€™s, probably reflecting population size and the fact that some of the listed cases go back centuries. Mexico and Russia are also well represented.

I wonder if the relatively short list for China is related to insufficient policing and/or what the authorities are willing to make public.

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Down the rabbit hole, I went to my local thrift store and discovered this.

IMG_1008

This is a series of Gothic romances based on the TV show Dark Shadows. There are 32 books and they are all written by Marlyln Ross. I assumed they were written by several different people, but it turns out thay are all written by William Edward Daniel Ross, the most prolific Canadian writer with 300+ Romance and Westerns. He says he can crank out 150 page book in three weeks.

I read one and it reads like proto-Twilight. The vampire Barnabas is portrayed as dashing but troubled. The heroine falls in love, unbeknownst to the knowlege that Barnabas is a vampire.

An interview with William
Archive.org link to books.

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Thread:

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I learned this from Medievalist at TOP

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