That interview is brilliant. The reporters trying to smear the two made such fools of themselves. My favorite bit is when a reported said "This isn't gathering much sympathy with the public," but here we are looking back on it and laughing at the moronic reporters instead. Love to see it

Definitely one for https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights.

Holy moly, TIL it's the same Zebbler from Zebbler Encanti. Wow, small world.

They're lucky they didn't get summarily shot in the eye sockets with "non lethal" pepper balls. BPD was a bunch of unaccountable thugs, and this "incident" was yet another for the highlight reel. When the Sox finally won the Series and we were all out celebrating on Comm Ave only to be attacked by those juiced-up-on-federal-terrorism-propaganda paramilitary fuckers, I was hoping I was going to get to bat one of their grenades back at them with the broom I was carrying (sweep!).

Wow … this escalated quickly.

> she is lucky we did not use deadly force because we had machine guns on scene," said authorities during a press conference

Somebody at my office printed and posted a pile of “Wombats are everywhere, if you see something, say something” posters, with an image of a wombat. People lost their shit over it and he got a reprimand. I thought it was hysterical. Wombats don’t live in DC. People are so over-sensitive.

Yep. The Mario question blocks put up by some teenagers in Ravenna, Ohio, in 2006 was a similar situation. https://www.eurogamer.net/news030406marioprank

This was dumb, but 2007 was many years past peak post-9/11 paranoia. Almost everyone who wasn't Boston PD or the media thought this was a gross overreaction to what was basically a Lite-Brite at the time. Don't forget, they were placed in other major cities across the country without incident.

When Family Guy s21e11 (2023) parodies Sleepless in Seattle (1993), they make a point of mocking the fact that a kid left his backpack behind at the Empire State building, as if an unattended bag in a public area is an unthinkable idea.

The show is usually pretty self-aware when it comes to jokes about terrorism and post-911 hysteria, so it was surprising to see this one played straight.

It reminded me of the meme that went around in 2007 - "If it isn't an American flag, it's probably a bomb".

I am at least very proud of our improv dealing with the press at least! Especially as I don’t think either of us slept particularly well the night before in holding cells.

They had amazing hair. I loved all their hair commentary. Best response to a literal media circus.

It was less beautiful if you spent two hours stuffed into a subway car (because at first they kept trains moving toward where the device was, but they were slowed, so we stopped at two packed stations full of people who were going to be late for work.)

Reminds me of the Cameron Todd Willingham case—an innocent man Texas wrongfully convicted and executed. The prosecutors brought his Iron Maiden poster into evidence in that trial, to paint a picture to the (very conservative 1990's Texas) jury that his heavy metal music interest was an indication of "satanic" evil.

- "At one point, Jackson showed Gregory Exhibit No. 60—a photograph of an Iron Maiden poster that had hung in Willingham’s house—and asked the psychologist to interpret it. “This one is a picture of a skull, with a fist being punched through the skull,” Gregory said; the image displayed “violence” and “death.” Gregory looked at photographs of other music posters owned by Willingham. “There’s a hooded skull, with wings and a hatchet,” Gregory continued. “And all of these are in fire, depicting—it reminds me of something like Hell. And there’s a picture—a Led Zeppelin picture of a falling angel. . . . I see there’s an association many times with cultive-type of activities. A focus on death, dying. Many times individuals that have a lot of this type of art have interest in satanic-type activities.”"

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire (2009)

Given that MIT was involved, she should thank her lucky stars that she didn’t get the Aaron Swartz level of support. You know, where MIT buys the bus, runs you over, and drags you around for days.

>Simpson had five to six ounces of Play-Doh in her hands, State Police Maj. Scott Pare said in a press conference this morning. The Play-Doh could have been mistaken for plastic explosives.

From the interview, it wasn't even Play-Doh!

STAR: Sure. That was this little hand-sculpted flower I brought to give my friend at the airport. (holds it up to camera, it's a bright pink rose, hardened clay)

XENI: Well did it look like that, or did it look like a wad of C4?

STAR: This is exactly what it was. It wasn't strapped to my chest, it was in my hand looking very much like a flower. It's hard (taps it against desk and against fingernails). It's not play-doh. (taps, audible) It's baked, hard. And this is exactly how it looked on that day, it hasn't changed shape or lost color or anything. They took it from me and kept it from me at the time. It's been about a year since I had this in my possession. But I chose not to show it to people until now.

I remember this incident and how infuriating it was. It's even more infuriating now that I've read the follow-up interview.

No, just people who want to pretend they’re military.

It's outrageous that anyone resigned or was fired over this other than city employees of Boston for lying about a stupid sign.

They should have just used a key to gouge "THE MOON RULZ" on the mayor's car instead.

It was a LED moonite. It wasn't scary at all.

> battery operated devices

I love when people clutch pearls and say exaggerated things to justify it. What does "battery operated" even mean lolol. Is the phrase supposed to conjure images of IEDs or what? They were battery powered LED signs

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_Mooninite_panic

I know somebody here in my city, who worked in audio editing for Cartoon Network, and apparently what he heard was that the FBI demanded somebody fall on their sword.

I will never understand all the apologists.

They were crudely constructed.

There was no information attached to them (one of the things MIT hackers always did was place clear contact information, removal instructions, etc on anything they left somewhere public.)

The devices had large cylinders wrapped in plastic. Sure, they could be batteries. They could also be containers of explosives.

Some of them the character is angry, and giving the finger. Sure fits a "angry at the world" attitude of a bomb-maker.

It doesn't seem to occur to people that bombs can be designed to attract attention, and can be booby-trapped to try and kill bomb disposal teams.

It doesn't seem to have occurred to people that if you are a bomb squad or police commander, you don't have the luxury of saying "oh yeah, that thing strapped to the bridge support for an interstate, phsht, that probably isn't a bomb, that's probably just some weird vidyah game character" because if you're wrong, people die. No. You get people away from it and try to figure out what it is.

Oh, and it turned out there had been a hoax bomb left in a hospital earlier by someone who was acting deranged, and incidents in NY and DC right before all this.

Then a few years later, wouldn't you know...a few miles away, two assholes left a bunch of pressure cookers at the finish line of the marathon, killed a bunch of people and wounded dozens, murdered a campus cop, and then led police on a gunfire-filled chase through multiple towns.

"Obey the Moon and its mighty wisdom. Ignore it, and be vaporized."

My late freshman roommate and I made Mooninites out of clear plastic blocks as one of the first things to decorate our room at Caltech. We had moved on to different roommates by the time this happened but we had kept the plastic Mooninites so naturally, we thought it was hilarious.

What evidence is there that someone intentionally used the context that the installations would be seen as bombs? And on what planet should the first reaction by police to seeing a bunch of obvious LED street art installations as being a massive bomb threat be seen as reasonable? If police think something stupid, it does not mean that stupid thought must be taken as legitimate and acceptable just because they are police.

The police should have apologized and taken responsibility for instigating an unnecessary panic.

Why do you believe "someone decided to be edgy, and intentionally use this context"?

How do you know the specific intent? Why weren't they just innocent hand made light up signs?

I think the Boston city employees that were the ones to "intentionally use this context" to maliciously misinterpret something benign as a threat. It's a time honored tradition for them.

> Wasn't the context that people were concerned about terrorist attacks with bombs in high-impact locations, against concentrations of people and key civil infrastructure?

Yes, people were paranoid about terrorism in 2007.

>And someone decided to be edgy, and intentionally use this context, by placing something that could be mistaken for a bomb made by a crazy person, exactly in those locations? (Or even do those as decoys, to support a separate attack.)

No. There’s no evidence of this.

> Of course the early emergency responses were life-critical urgent, with no one having complete information.

Only in Boston. The signs were also placed in LA and Portland without incident.

> And once they did have information, you can see how a company abusing fresh terrorism concerns like that, with what was arguably a hoax attack, for commercial promotion purposes, would still have a lot of explaining to do.

There’s no evidence these were intended to be perceived as a threat. You have imagined this.

> Random kids huffing "Chill out, it's just a prank" doesn't make it all OK.

You say “random kids”. I say “rational adults”.

> And all the dissing of emergency responders, who reasonably had to act as if this might be another terrorist attack, didn't seem very fair, nor thought-out.

Emergency responders have a responsibility to handle reality appropriately. Boston’s response was inappropriate. Being scared doesn’t justify overreaction.

> It might help to look at another Boston terrorism incident, the Boston Marathon bombing. Bombs went off, no one knew the extent of the attack, and, while the crowd was rightly trying to run away from the danger, emergency responders were running towards the explosions, to help protect people.

It doesn’t help to make this comparison. One is a benign marketing campaign and the other was a terrorist attack.

> Why mock that? We need that.

The ends don’t justify the means. First responders have a duty to protect the public which they failed by creating the Mooninite Panic.

First responders are not above criticism.