Comments on: Children of tech executive slain in New York; nanny accused of murder and attempted suicide

By: TheMudshark

TheMudshark — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 22:24:00 +0000

And that´s the real story here, isn´t it bob?

By: bob

bob — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 22:38:00 +0000

So if I have enough money and power, the police will pick me up at the airport and escort me to the hospital like a taxi service at the tax payers expense?

Seems logical.

Would this occur for someone who makes less than 90k a year? Probably not.

By: binarydragon

binarydragon — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 09:53:00 +0000

Or perhaps you could exercise a little individual responsibility over what you read online? The headline is warning enough – surely there was enough information there for you to exercise mature judgment over reading on? A quite absurd degree of pandering being requested here – take ownership of your online reading experience and man up.

By: binarydragon

binarydragon — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 09:37:00 +0000

“I wish this hadn’t been posted on BoingBoing.” Umm…so don’t click the link? Take responsibility for what you read. Come on, you’re a grown up.

The job of a news site is to report and observe, hopefully objectively, not to make their readership feel better. If individuals feel prompted by this story to donate to charity (eg worldvision.org) then that is their own responsibility – a quick Google search will reveal lots of charities requiring funding if that’s what you feel moved to do – it’s not the job of the news provider to meet your emotional needs. Whilst your idea is well intentioned, we are responsible for our own actions – including what we read and what action that provokes in our own lives.

By: binarydragon

binarydragon — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 09:33:00 +0000

Did the article you cite really need a trigger warning? Surely the title is self-explanatory and the trigger warning entirely redundant. Any responsible reader surely has the wit to steer clear of articles with such overtly stated titles. They alone can know what their triggers are – individuals need to take more responsibility for themselves and expect others to nanny them a little less.

By: Singe

Singe — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 08:25:00 +0000

I honestly don’t mean to sound cheap, but a countermeasure? I say, ‘be excellent to each other.’

By: nachoproblem

nachoproblem — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 05:02:00 +0000

What gets me about stories like this, from the Colorado shooting on down, is that the only useful thing I can imagine taking from it (other than the usual, life is precious, be glad you haven’t been slain today) would be any possible answers to questions like, WHY DID THIS HAPPEN? and perhaps more to the point HOW COULD IT BE STOPPED FROM HAPPENING AGAIN? And of course, I don’t expect there are any such answers at all, once again. It… it just sucks, just plain, nothing but sucks.

I think I shall also be getting drunk tonight. Though there’s not much of tonight left.

By: Xeni Jardin

Xeni Jardin — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 02:48:00 +0000

Oh, yeah. I didn’t author that post. I don’t mean to sound defensive; maybe I’ll reconsider adding that next time. I think it’s good for us to be consistent, and I can see your point.

By: Xeni Jardin

Xeni Jardin — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 02:44:00 +0000

Perhaps you didn’t read the blog post in entirety. If you did, you’d have read parts where I pointed out the fact that the father was a well-known technology industry executive who worked in a number of digital media companies. He, his wife, and his children are known and loved by many other tech biz folks who are part of our extended community of friends and contemporaries.

The comment thread you commented in also contains comments from people who know/knew the father and his family.

When the story is connected to your community that directly, it’s relevant to your blog.

By: Joshua Bardwell

Joshua Bardwell — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 02:24:00 +0000

Oh! It all makes sense now. Thanks for clearing that up.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 02:14:00 +0000

We are no longer a Directory of Wonderful Things; we are now One Big Inbred Fuckfest. Do try to read the policy memos when they come out.

By: Joshua Bardwell

Joshua Bardwell — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 01:21:00 +0000

I understand that stories like this are tech-related, and so relevant to BoingBoing’s readership. I also understand that BB has no strict editorial policy, and each editor posts whatever articles he or she thinks are interesting. But still, I have to ask: how is this “wonderful”? What is the point of choosing this story, and the previous one about the cannibal cop, other than for gruesome shock value? This isn’t even like, for example, the Trayvon Martin shooting, where interesting issues of race and firearms rights were raised. This just seems like digital rubbernecking of a horrible, horrible tragedy, and I think less of BB for posting it. That being said, I’m open to the possibility that there is some angle here that I’m missing, and if anybody wants to convince me that there is merit in sharing these stories, I’m open.

By: John Fleming

John Fleming — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 21:02:00 +0000

I guess I was reacting to Cory’s earlier post with this title: “NYPD officer planned to kill and eat women [trigger warning]“. My immediate reaction was to wonder why that post had a warning and yours didn’t. However, I understand that BB is not a monolithic entity, and each individual contributor makes his or her own decisions. You are right, of course: each headline was in itself enough of a warning to avoid the article if one is sensitive.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 20:29:00 +0000

Spurned spouses murdering the children to get revenge is the new black. Not that it's exactly new.

By: fivetonsflax

fivetonsflax — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 19:04:00 +0000

Words fail. Kiss your children if you have any.

By: stoicromance

stoicromance — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 18:17:00 +0000

I have a little sticker on the inside of my glasses that just applies it to everything. No fuss, no muss.

By: KWillets

KWillets — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 18:11:00 +0000

I worked with Kevin in the past, and I’m very sorry to see this.

By: Xeni Jardin

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 18:04:00 +0000

As noted in the story, also, the husband was a former executive with LiveJournal.

By: Manny

Manny — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 17:39:00 +0000

Thank you.

By: billstreeter

billstreeter — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 17:31:00 +0000

Because she wasn’t home. The third (middle) middle child was at a swimming lesson with her mother.

Tragic, I can’t imagine the pain. It’s painful just knowing this happened.

By: Xeni Jardin

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 17:31:00 +0000

You’re right, I’ve fixed the lede.

By: Xeni Jardin

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 17:30:00 +0000

The third child was with the mother, not at the apartment, when the murders were committed. It’s all in the linked news items.

By: Manny

Manny — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 17:11:00 +0000

I do wonder why the third child was spared and how it will be for that child growing up with pictures and aftermath.

By: Kludgegrrl

Kludgegrrl — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 16:49:00 +0000

But there is an upside, for us, which is to keep us mindful of how fragile so many of the things we hold to be precious.

We hear about war and strife in faraway lands, among people who may seem to live very different lives than us. Of course we know that terrible things are happening in the world. But to hear that people who live close by (to some of us — I grew up in their neighborhood), who have similar interests, and really appear protected by their success from so many of the buffets that life deals out — to realize that something so dreadful can strike them, for no real reason, has a different emotional impact.

I cannot imagine what they are going through now, and how they will feel for the rest of their lives. But I can remember to appreciate the people I love, who I have in my life, today.

By: joe k.

joe k. — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 16:41:00 +0000

I misread the first paragraph that the 2 kids AND the mom were killed — the sentence and its punctuation is a bit ambiguous. Sorry about your loss. I’ve got kids, too, and the thought is unthinkable.

Once we get a cure for cancer, the next thing is a cure for mental illnesses.

By: Lurking_Grue

Lurking_Grue — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 16:41:00 +0000

This is horrible but my first thought was “Somebody still uses livejournal?!?!”

By: anansi133

anansi133 — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 16:33:00 +0000

Ouch. When this kind of awful happens, I think I do want to know about it, and not from talking heads in suits either. And yeah, it’s a fine line between grief and gossip sometimes, and it’s not always about being made comfortable.

There’s a lot more out there I can’t seem to do anything about, that makes my soul itch. But it’s important to know the score. Good Guys lost some ground today. I’m still trying to make that team.

By: blueelm

blueelm — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 16:26:00 +0000

We don’t know what happened. Some times when people have that kind of breakdown they are not thinking about killing themselves the way you or I might. They may have acted out of psychosis then realized what they did. They may have had a lot of things go on that prompt it. It’s really just a horrible tragedy. Horrible tragedies often just have nothing but misfortune all around.

The thing that makes me sad is that there appears to have been no warning, nothing to give a clue to the family to get their children away. And that is so tragic. My heart really goes out to them for the suffering they must feel. And frankly, my heart goes out to Ortega’s family who must also be deeply pained and ashamed.

By: John A Arkansawyer

John A Arkansawyer — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 16:20:00 +0000

It felt so strange to click “Like” there, but I did. Sometimes you just have to sit with the pain.

By: Kelly Amsbry

Kelly Amsbry — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 16:17:00 +0000

Truly awful. Kevin and Marina my heart goes out to you and I am deeply sorry for your loss.