- 28 September 2025 Gran Blanc MI, 4 killed (shot) (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/us/grand-blanc-shooting-fire-mormon-church.html?searchResultPosition=2) investigation ongoing
Incidents 41
Killed 175
- 6 October 2025 4* killed (vehicular homicide/wrong way) (https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/local/4-dead-wrong-way-crash-interstate-170-near-i-70-elderly-driver/63-7ebe807e-8c5f-4918-8fba-d41f420d3904) elderly driver
Incidents 42
Killed 183
It is darn near November. I welcome discussion if a 2026 version of this list would be welcome.
Several disjoint thoughts not forming an essay …
-
My view is you’ve done a great job of gathering these kinds of events. It’s clearly a labor of love. But like any such labor, eventually it becomes stale to the doer. And reading between your lines, it sounds like maybe that’s become(ing) true for you?
-
Without separating the events with bad intent from the mere accidents (such as the one directly above), I’m not sure what the deeper purpose is. 350 million people get up to a lot of evil, a lot of mischief, a lot of mistakes, and a lot of bad luck.
-
These annual lists might make great wiki pages, but I also question what value it brings to the Dope. We don’t tend to pollute your list with our commentary, which is a good thing. Even without moderation, this stays neatly within “breaking news” guidelines even without the formal tag & rules.
If you have some underlying social point to make, you’ve certainly made it to this small, shrinking, and increasingly stale audience over the years. If that social point is still important to you, I propose that finding a larger audience (e.g. wiki) might refresh your resolve. -
There is a psychological phenomenon whose technical term I forget, but it amounts to an excessive devotion to continuity. “I’ve done this X years now; I can’t break the streak!” Or alternatively “I’m a [whatever]-doer. It’s part of my identity. I can’t stop doing [whatever] now; it’s who I am.”
So one keeps going to events one no longer enjoys, visits people they don’t like on holidays, does activities they now find stultifying, etc., justifying it to themselves largely or entirely in terms of preserving their streak or their self-image. Like most quirks of normal human nature, recognizing it exists is half the battle to managing its power over your behavior for good or ill. -
Understand I do respect your efforts and do read each entry. The topic is an interesting and quirky contribution to the odd stone soup that is SDMB. I’m not trying to chase you away for my own sake. But if your interest is flagging, my value-neutral observation is that I rather doubt anyone else, or elses, will step into your shoes come January if you elect to drop it.
-
Thank you for your efforts, whatever you decide.
I shall think on those points.
The Palisades Fire is starting to resolve itself as an arson. At the moment it is pending. I shall rule on it at the end of the year.
pp) 7 January 2025 Los Angeles CA, 12 killed, 7 missing (arson) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palisades_Fire) arsonist began the fire on 1 January it reignited on 7 January. Charges against Jonathan Rinderknecht as of now do not include any form of homicide
It now occurs to me that if you were considering dropping it, another approach might be to try to canvass the current readership and your regular contributors to see if some of them could collectively keep the process going. The weekly xkcd thread works that way. There is a principal contributor, but if they’re late or busy, any of a number of us drop in to deliver the goods.
That thread also differs from this one in that there’s more audience participation discussion about the comics, in addition to just the cites to the comics.
Which additional participation about these events might be another avenue to keep the idea of these threads alive if that’s important to you. Encourage discussion about each event, folks seeking additional or subsequent news cites, etc. But avoiding simple ranting about violence for ranting’s sake. We have the Omnibus Evil MF thread for that.