The author of this package was caught with 50lbs of Potassium Nitrate (in the middle of NYC) and a bunch of materials on making bombs and booby traps when his apartment caught fire:
He’s also going on about a wild conspiracy theory about Aaron Swartz getting assassinated because he was on to Ghislaine Maxwell, or something like that. And linking it to his open source comments in a way that doesn’t seem to make sense.
He’s almost certainly going through major mental issues, along the lines of schizophrenia or something similar. He needs help.
What’s the concrete evidence making this likely to be true? If there’s none, just wild speculation, then I’d consider it a wild conspiracy theory.
The link seems to be “Swartz downloaded millions of scholarly articles using an MIT network, and Epstein/Maxwell donated money to
MIT.” That seems to be about it? Not exactly a logical reason to conclude that Swartz was assassinated as part of an Epstein/Maxwell coverup.
as is usual with a lot of recent conspiracy theories, seems analogous to apophenia[0] to me, or something similar.
the non-conspiracy "fact" seems to be what most people here think about Swartz: that he killed himself after a overzealous prosecution. Nothing to do with Epstein or Swartz's role at Reddit.
> When investigators entered Squires' apartment to look further, they found more bomb making items including potassium nitrate.
Magnesium powder, sulfur powder, copper powder, aluminum powder, hobby fuse and mixing cups were also discovered in the home.
"The chemicals separately are what they are, but taken together they can assemble an explosive device," Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller said. "There were books about military explosives, booby traps and other things...What we're looking at here is the totality of the circumstances that raised our concern to a level where we're going to need more investigation."
Does that sound to you like he wanted to make a candy rocket?
You can do chemistry all your want, but attempting to build a bomb, even of the attempt doesn't succeed, is illegal.
At the time of the article, the investigation was still ongoing. That's likely why they were no charges yet.
> You can do chemistry all your want, but attempting to build a bomb, even of the attempt doesn't succeed, is illegal.
I will also say, that as a native New Yorker, doing this type of "kitchen chemistry" (if that was he was doing) is _extremely_ reckless in a dense residential neighborhood.
He was either was just a hobbyist who liked experimenting with explosives and he was fine with recklessly endangering an entire community.... or he was planning to commit a bombing.
A different article:
> On Thursday, law enforcement sources told News 4 the fire started because he had a box next to his stove that caught fire. He tossed it, trying to douse the flames, and it landed in his living room, which then also caught fire.
So he went to the hospital with severe burns on his hands. We don't know yet exactly what he was doing, but I don't think he deserves anybody's sympathy. That has its limits.
You guys are quoting all these "scary" lists of chemicals not realizing you're only proving my point. Those aren't chemicals for making explosives. They're for making fireworks at best. Non-detonating things that could burn fast and have pretty colors.
I suppose we should charge everyone who starts a fire while cooking with reckless endangerment too? I get that there are different standards of liberty in dense urban areas but I don't think this is beyond them. It's just cops and feds talking up their non-bust.
They'll have had the local fire marshall come in to determine legality and when that failed to create a crime they'd fall back on the BS charge that was dismissed to justify their violence on the scene.
https://abc7ny.com/suspicious-package-queens-astoria-fire/64...
https://www.qgazette.com/articles/more-charges-possible-for-...
https://nypost.com/2020/09/16/resident-of-nyc-home-with-susp...
He might have been the unibomber in training.
Don't want to pile on, but dude clearly seems to be going through mental issues.