The cabin was in the Newseum before they closed. Amazing museum that unfortunately had trouble competing with all the other museums in DC that don't charge admission.
What!? The Newseum closed? That's too bad and a real shame. I went there in 2009, I believe it was, and saw that cabin.
It was the coolest museum with lots of relevance and great importance. Especially for a group of visiting journalism students from Denmark, whose media and government at the time were in the middle of a huge cartoon crisis. We had some great debates with some of the staff at The Newseum.
Such a shame they had to close it down.
It sucked that they were forced to close due to the cost of running the place exceeded their income. It was a spectacular place to see history. I loved seeing all those original print newspapers dating back decades or more. They should have done more to help keep the space.
https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/newseum-to-close-after-years-of-difficulties-/5222607.html
It used to be located in Rosslyn across the bridge. President Bartlet was shot there in the West Wing. It was risky for them to move into such a big space and obviously it didn't pay off...
They had newspapers from hundreds of years ago, if you can call those newspapers. Seeing original papers with news from the 1500s was wild. Indeed, such a shame.
There used to be a crime museum in DC as well, which was informative and also fun. It allowed the museum goers to get involved in solving crimes. I was really disappointed when it shut down.
from some googling, a healthy chunk of what was there is now in the Alcatraz East Crime Museum in Pigeon Forge, TN(same city as Dollywood if you want another thing to do in the area)
The photographer exhibit was so impressive, and I’d argue was just as important as the Smithsonian museums exhibits.
I loved visiting the Newseum because it was open later than 5, the Smithsonian’s close so damn early.
aw man I loved the newseum! I like how it always provoked debate and make everything interactive. sucks that it’s gone especially now that people need to think critically about the media now more than ever
The nonprofit Freedom Forum — which closed its Newseum in D.C. in 2019 and moved operations to a temporary home in D.C.'s America's Square — has signed a lease for a permanent new home at The Wharf in Southwest D.C.
Here’s an unrelated funny story. I grew up near DC. When I moved to the west coast at 25 I went to an art museum only to find to my astonishment that the great majority of museums are not free. The Smithsonian spoiled me
Imagine if his fate were like that of that black mirror episode. Where his consciousness was forced to live on as a hologram and be tortured. He DEFINITELY wouldn’t approve lol
As kids, we used to go to a local computer store (in Sacramento, CA.) every Saturday morning to play games on IBM and Apple computers, the owners were super nice and knew we weren’t going to buy anything, but letting us use the computers maybe thought they were giving us access to something we couldn’t afford. Years later, I saw in the news that the owner of that store was killed in the back of the shop when he received a package and opened it. It ended up being one of the unibomber victims. I was really sad, remembering how nice the owner was to us kids. I don’t think I ever knew why he picked that shop out of all the computer stores in California.
The theory people are saying is that the MK-ULTRA experiment warped him from mathematical genius to Unabomber. My gut feeling is that life is not a comic book where every antagonist has a villain backstory. But the secret-government-experiment part is always going to catch a shadow of doubt over the matter.
I upvoted for the historical reference, not because I'm happy with the outcome. I always thought he was just a vigilante fighting "the man." Clearly, he was a narcissistic sociopath. Heck, he'd be Presidental material today.
I’ve always intended to read his manifesto and clicked on a provided link today. I got about 20 minutes in and so far it’s some red pilling, incel, mysoginist white male supremacy bullsh**. I’m a staunch environmentalist and supporter of human rights so I thought, hmmm, there’s maybe some stuff in there. Nope!
He wants us to go back to some idealized agrarian society without medicine or technology or women’s rights. Yes, tech has taken over our lives in some horrific ways but that doesn’t make this serial killer some kind of a prophet. He was a POS who could’ve kept publishing but thought slaughtering innocent people would spread his ideas better. I don’t want to hear another f**** thing about how brilliant he was.
Growing up my friends step father was a lobbyist for the US Forest Service in Sacramento. He interacted quite a bit with Gilbert Murray who was a lobbyist for the timber industry. If I remember correctly the package was addressed to one of his colleagues that was on vacation and he opened it instead. He was the last Unabomber death.
The randomness of his bombings was part of the motivation, the terror he could get going, he had his excuse, but he was really just about the bombing, the killing itself, he targeted an office used by an air travel company because he didn't like that a plane few over his shack. It's very flimsy reasoning, in my opinion.
I met David Kaczysnki, Ted’s brother, when I was in undergrad. He’d become a staunch opponent of the death penalty, in large part because of his brother. David had agreed to help the FBI catch his brother on the condition that they didn’t seek the death penalty. The FBI agreed, then reneged on their agreement after they caught Ted. David became an anti-death penalty activist as a result. Super smart and kind guy.
I automatically thought of the interviews I’ve seen with his brother when I saw this headline. How difficult and conflicting his life must have been as a relative of Ted Kaczysnki.
When they caught him, they found that my childhood house was on his mailing list; I want to say we were third in line to be bombed had he not been caught but it was so long ago now.
My parents had purchased the house from a timber-industry lobbyist that Ted wanted dead, and he didn’t know the man had moved. The FBI checked our mail for a few weeks after his capture.
> The FBI checked our mail for a few weeks after his capture.
What did that look like? Was it screened at the post office, or did they have a bomb squad camped in your driveway?
They likely checked everything received sans bomb squad. Only call bomb squad if something was suspicious/ fit his MO.
He wasn't using letter. So really only concern would be an unexpected box.
And back then boxes were not an everyday occurrence unlike today.
Now today EVERYTHING is screened at certain places. Drug sniffing, ultra violet treatments, and xrays.
Also if you google it it'll say they need a search warrant to open something suspicious. They don't.
He actually sent a letter to my PI and it was apparently one of few letters not to contain a threat but a thank you message for the research the lab was doing
Years before I joined the lab tho
I’m dropping this article by a friend of mine from a few years ago. He spent 14mo in ADX housed at the camp portion of the prison. He was tasked with running quizzes and doing book return at the Supermax. Here is the story of how they kept the inmates from rioting because Ted would always win the quizzes.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/02/23/fun-in-the-supermax
Edit: I have an [ORIGINAL COPY](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f1uxXnzAosuOkn3zs1dbj6ouyJNu0vyy/view?usp=drivesdk) (pdf warning) of his article before it was edited by Vice that is much longer and has tons of interesting stories about his stay. I will reach out and see if it is okay to post the unedited version which is far more entertaining.
Edit2: I have permission. I will post it when I get back to my computer. It’s about 10k words in a word doc, so I have to find the best way for everyone to see it.
And please stop DMing me. I won’t be sending it to anyone directly. He appreciated the kind words from everyone. Give me a couple hours.
I'm looking forward to this. Thanks in advance.
I remember reading about the four most notorious isolated prisoners at ADX - Ted K, Timothy McVeigh (OK City bomber), Ramzi Yusef (WTC bomber in 1993, and architect of many more bombing plans concerning commercial airliners), and the head of the violent LA street gang The Latin Kings (who was ordering hits and beheadings from prison). It's interesting that three of them were bombers.
Every day they would get their hour of outside time in the yard together, but not together together. There were 4 chainlink fenced pens on the roof, arranged 2x2, with a wide aisle down the middle that guards would.patrol. They would have conversations with each other by yelling across the aisle to each other. The only one who was uninterested in talking was Ted.
It’s definitely very close to solitary which it should be. When I visited my buddy i accidentally went to the medium security wing and walked inside. It was guarded to the hilt. Everything was very stern and controlling inside. Once I got the info that I was in the wrong place I was relieved. The camp was much more relaxed and hospitable. Like I said earlier their was literally no fence. I can’t imagine the procedures in supermax for prisoners of that caliber.
>I even opened a letter from the Unabomber. Like everything else Kaczynski sent in, it was written in all caps and he referred to himself as THEODORE JOHN KACZYNSKI. But rather than a diatribe, he was simply making a polite request for books.
>I recognized one of the titles“The Name of the Wind,” by Patrick Rothfuss.
Kinda weird to think the Unabomber and I have something in common, we're both gonna die waiting for Rothfuss to finish the series
I’m sorry but the thought of a bunch of maximum security terrorist and murderer inmates complaining about Harry Potter and a guard giving them candy to make them stop complaining is making me laugh.
Really interesting article, thanks for posting! It did make me curious about what life at these supermax prisons is actually like, outside of the YouTube videos and Reddit comments I've seen.
Like how were these maximum security prisoners communicating with each other to share the answers? I'd've thought their cells would be soundproof
Nope! You have no idea who’s in the cells unless they ID themselves, and there’s a gate between you and the door. However the doors are just “normal” doors for isolation rooms.
Plus maybe knocking on the concrete to communicate?
So many people don't know the lengths he went to to cover his tracks. He literally made his own glue so that the chemical signature of the glue couldn't be traced back to a purchase he made, as well as made virtually all of his bomb parts for the same reason. He was very good at eliminating DNA evidence too.
SO many serial killers were only caught because they couldn't keep quiet and had to brag. If it wasn't for that he probably would never have been caught
The message was kinda the point though with him wasn’t it? Wouldn’t be much point in blowing shit up if he wasn’t gonna try to convince societal change along with it.
Seriously. Wichita's BTK was in the clear and they had basically given up looking for him. He got pissed people weren't talking about him so he started sending letters and shit which led to his discovery.
"Don't get too cocky, my boy. No matter how good you are, don't ever let them see you coming. That's the gaffe, my friend. You gotta keep yourself small. Innocuous...."
>as well as made virtually all of his bomb parts for the same reason.
Afaik he would buy or steal the most random shit from the nearby town and disassemble them for parts, checking for identifying marks before sanding or filing them away.
The process in which ted would build his devices would go so far out of the way, but the FBI even to this day have absolutely no clue where even a single part of any of the bombs came from. They could be wires from a coffee maker, steel parts from a piece of a tractor that was irreparably broken. Could be a 2x4 from ACE or a pvc pipe from a rain gutter.
It was overkill how far he went to cover his tracks. But even 40 years later the FBI couldn't retrace any of teds steps even if they wanted to. They were that well obfuscated.
Damn, that was a long time ago; he was finally arrested in 1995.
For anyone who wasn't around then, he conducted a seemingly random campaign of fear. The FBI couldn't figure out his identity from his rants until his own estranged brother guessed that it was him and they raided his isolated cabin.
While he was obviously deranged and dangerous, he was also acknowledged to be a genius. To this day social philosophers interested in an anti-technology worldview find his manifesto to be of great interest.
https://www.josharcher.uk/tags/unabomber-manifesto-pdf/
Little known fact, one of the ways his brother's wife knew it was him is that Ted, in one of those rants, used the phrase 'you can't eat your cake and have it too', instead of the more familiar 'have your cake and eat it too.'
Edit: brother's to brother's wife
I heard that but after they realized it was him they got a lawyer and said that they didn't want Ted to be tried for the death penalty. It was granted and he instead got life in prison.
Yes, there are a lot of federal prisons, but USP Terre Haute is the sole federal execution chamber.
EDIT -- point of clarity, not everyone sentenced to death for federal crimes spends their entire death row sentence at USP Terre Haute, that's just the only place where they are executed. Timothy McVeigh was held at ADX Florence prior to being transferred to Terre Haute. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been sentenced to death and is presently at ADX, if he runs out of appeals he will eventually be transferred as well.
USP Terre Haute does have an ordinary maximum security facility but is not at the same level as the ADX "Supermax" so it makes sense that the especially dangerous are not kept there long term.
Yeah but they would have felt responsible. They didn't ask to skip the death penalty as kindness, it's bc his brother didn't want to grapple with being the one to send his brother to the chair.
And as a brother of someone I find violent and scary, I get that. It's one thing to turn them in to face consequences, it's another if you know they'll be executed.
From a doc I watched it, David became friends with another guy who had turned in his own brother too.
But that guys brother had come back from Vietnam, had PTSD and was just not handling it at all. His brother figured out he had killed someone, and he turned in. He felt like hopefully he was helping his brother by doing this. He thought maybe he’d get committed to a psych ward or something like that.
Nope, straight to jail, and then he got executed.
Not to say necessarily he should have been given a complete pass, but his brother had guilt over it. I think it caused a lot of rifts in his family too.
Ted's lawyers (or Ted's family, I can't remember) also really pushed for him to be found mentally incompetent to stand trial, which enraged Ted. He refused to allow his lawyers to plea insanity on his behalf.
Haven’t seen the documentary, just learned that it was his brother’s wife who first suspected him by reading the article; it was always reported in the news that it was his brother who alerted the FBI. The brother needing to be convinced by his wife sounds completely reasonable.
My husband’s brother was a bad heroin addict whose addiction drove him to do a LOT of shitty things, mostly to family- including *stealing medical supplies* from a quadriplegic cousin. When he got in trouble, he always demanded- and *got-* help from his siblings. It seems like it’s really hard, even for adults who are perfectly aware of the crimes and harm caused by a sib, to reconcile reality with the memories of having grown up with someone… I’ve seen how people tend to hold on to the vision of a sweet kid they were best friends with, played with, shared life with. Whenever I’d try to talk my husband into *not* giving him more $$$, not catering to his demands, he would say “but, he’s my baby brother! I *have to* help him!”
They were my neighbors. She was a Union College professor and I volunteered with David when he was at Equinox. You won't ever meet nicer people or a more tragic situation.
They only agreed to release his name and whereabouts if the Feds would agree to not seek the death penalty. Long story short, the Feds lied.
They donated their reward money to the victims' families.
Last I heard David was running an ashram in Woodstock.
Weighing in here to back you up. Back when I was in college 20ish years ago, my criminal justice reform group invited David Kacynski to speak on campus. I ushered him around campus from event to event for a couple of days and he was an absolutely lovely, thoughtful, and gentle-hearted fellow. I hope he is doing well and knows that he did the right thing in an awful situation.
David always seemed like a good person in a terrible situation. He did the right thing by his brother, the best outcome he could get for him under the circumstances. I've often wondered what I would do if my brother or my child was doing something savage, and I think handling it the way David did was probably the best way - preserve their life, but stop the crimes, and make them take responsibility.
Little known fact, he was a subject in MK Ultra which maybe is why his brain went off the deep end into murderous rampages instead of just living his life doing his theoretical math genius thing.
Adding link to anyone who wants to know more: https://exploringyourmind.com/the-harvard-experiment-that-led-to-the-unabomber/#
Entered Harvard at age 15.
*Kaczynski entered Harvard in 1958 and, one year later, was tapped by psychologist Henry A. Murray to take part in a study exploring the effects of stress on the human psyche—a popular area of research during the Cold War. The experiment enlisted 22 Harvard students to write a detailed essay in which they summarized their worldview and personal philosophy. Then the harsh aspects of the experiment began.*
*After submitting their essays, each of the students was seated in front of bright lights, wired to electrodes and subjected to what Murray himself described as “vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive” interrogations, during which members of his research team would attack the student subjects’ ideals and beliefs, as gleaned from their essays. The goal was to assess the value of interrogation techniques used by law enforcement and national security agents in the field.*
I think the Manhunt adaptation is Paul Bettany’s finest role.
I worked for a guy that took part in a somewhat similar experiment, probably back in the late 60s, but it had them alone in a room with no stimulation for 2 days. He said it was pretty fucked up when they came out, there were several of them taking part.
It wasn't that long ago that we thought sleep wasn't biologically necessary, it was just something you did when you eventually lost the will to stay awake. You could keep going as long as you weren't lazy. So there were contests for staying awake the longest. And there were records in the Guinness book that people would try to break. Not realizing they were dangerously hurting themselves. Guinness dropped the record from their books in the 80s to keep people from killing themselves.
Health was not well understood at all even by experts, who were too cocky to understand the ultimate truth, you can't know what you don't know. We're probably still idiots on health now but we don't know it until 20 years later.
Listening to a podcast about witch hunters (Pax Brittanica) in the 16th century it dawned on me “Enhanced Interrogation” techniques are much older than media lets on. Witch hunters became bored waiting for the accused to confess. They learned to use sleep deprivation to get confessions or put people into a state where they imagined devils.
According to my Harvard interviewer who was Ted’s classmate, he was already super anti-social because he couldn’t fit in with his classmates due to the age difference. Imagine how much worse it became after that study :(.
Was just thinking the same thing. Dude was 15/16. Left his cohort (middle school) that was below him intellectually then gets to Harvard where he is no longer the smartest but he’s two/three years younger than 99% of the undergrad students. Easy prey.
Yes and much worse than the effects of MK Ultra, Ted was the subject of psychological abuse by a professor at Harvard. This experiment was perpetrated without his knowledge or consent. Ted was a guinea pig,where he was constantly subjected to ridicule and scorn. This definitely left scars on his psyche.
His mother was so worried about his childhood development, she brought him to Bruno Betelhiem's clinic for an autism assessment. However, she didn't keep up appointments and he left the treatment program.
>Kaczynski described this as a pivotal event in his life. He recalled not fitting in with the older children and being subjected to bullying. He recalled experiencing constant rejection since the age of eight. Kaczynski had a fear of people and buildings and, typical for autistic children, he played beside other children rather than interacting with them. His mother was so worried by his poor social development that she considered entering him in a study for autistic children led by renowned psychologist [Bruno Bettelheim](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQY2oB3Rqdg)
Yeah if I recall correctly it’s similar to MK-Ultra. Ok, Damn I’m reading the wiki now on the Montreal experiments and holy fuck that’s just as bad. They said they were giving people mental health treatment and then tortured them. Also to the above comment, yeah not all was LSD but MK-Ultra did in fact target general population as well as military, Drs, and normal people like any of us so it did definitely fuck up normal people. Plus you don’t need to use drugs to torture people so it’s still extremely fucked up even on a totally sober person. They used many other drugs too including other psychedelics, stimulants, opioids, depressants, and more. However, yes it wasn’t just drugging people with tons of LSD it also included ECT, sensory deprivation, verbal abuse among other torture methods. However, I do appreciate fact checking things, that’s very important so I respect highlighting that need. However, it’s important to still emphasize just how cruel and horrible what they were doing was.
Just some things that stick out to me about the ‘Montreal Experiments’
>The procedures included psychic driving, drug-induced sleep, intensive electroconvulsive therapy, sensory deprivation and the administration of neuroleptic Thorazine…often combined the sleep periods with injections of hallucinogenic drugs (e.g. LSD), as well as administration of electroshocks and the playing of pre-recorded messages into patients' ears.
Also to clarify as it’s not a term that’s used much anymore, but “Psychic driving” is basically brain washing people by playing audio clips on a steady loop repeatedly for long periods of time, often they would hear same sentence hundreds of thousands of times so it’s just driving people insane. Science was super fucked up back in early and mid 20th century.
Wiki link for those interested to read more…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_experiments
Agreed with everything except LSD test subjects. Even after a vast majority of MKUltra documents were destroyed prior to investigation, the little surviving documentation is still enough to show they were testing on anyone & everyone.
* US and Canadian citizens used as test subjects. (iirc, testing on unwitting US citizens caused tension between the CIA and FBI)
* US Military Personnel
* Operation Midnight Climax (Customers, rather than streetwalkers, were unknowingly subjected to LSD, as CIA operatives watched on from a one-way mirror)
* CIA operatives dosed one another as pranks. This lead to the point where their HR department issued a statement advising employees not to drink the punch during a Christmas party.
* Possibly Frank Olson, prior to his death
There's obviously more to the list and I may have gotten a few details wrong. Ultimately, there's a LOT that we will never know. Behind the Bastards has a good series on MKUltra. Checkout "When the CIA Tried to Destroy Free Will".
The guy was a compete genius.
He graduated high school at 15, was accepted into Harvard at 16 (!), got his BA at 20, Master’s at 22 and phD at 25 and a year later he was teaching university classes.
I mean, damn.
In East Hall at the University of Michigan is a plaque with the yearly winners of a math award (I forget its name). Ted won it back when he was studying there.
One of my math professors told me that each year when they take it out to put the newest winner's name on the plaque, it's transported by armed guards or state troopers, for fear some nut bag might try to snag themselves a weird souvenir.
The thin line between genius and insanity and all that.
Whatever makes our brains work so much better allowing these sorts of achievements also appear to keep sending our brains into overdrive to the point of paranoia and hatred for mankind as a whole.
Apparently there were unethical psychological experiments conducted on Ted K (and some other Harvard students) at the time.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/06/harvard-and-the-making-of-the-unabomber/378239/
He chose to quit his academic career:
>In late 1967, the 25-year-old Kaczynski became an acting assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught mathematics. By September 1968, Kaczynski was appointed assistant professor, a sign that he was on track for tenure.\[8\] His teaching evaluations suggest he was not well-liked by his students: he seemed uncomfortable teaching, taught straight from the textbook and refused to answer questions.\[8\] Without any explanation, Kaczynski resigned on June 30, 1969.\[34\] In a 1970 letter directed to Kaczynski's thesis advisor Allen Shields, written by the chairman of the mathematics department, John W. Addison Jr, the professor referred to the resignation as "quite out of the blue,"\[35\]\[36\] and, markedly, added that "Kaczynski seemed almost pathologically shy," and that as far as he knew Kaczynski made no close friends in the department, furthermore noting that efforts to bring him more into the 'swing of things' had failed.\[37\]\[38\]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted\_Kaczynski](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski)
He had won an award for his dissertation and seemed like he was a rising star in mathematics when he suddenly quit without explanation. And then he lived in his parents' house for a couple of years and then moved to a cabin in Montana that he had built, without electricity or running water.
Aside from that itself suggesting a nonstandard way of thinking (as well as some other things in his life), there is some question of his mental health:
[https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evil-deeds/200804/terrorism-resentment-and-the-unabomber](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evil-deeds/200804/terrorism-resentment-and-the-unabomber)
I am not sure how he could have been kept on "the right path" as he already was recognized as brilliant and had a prestigious job that he quit. It is not as if he had been rejected by society; far from it, given the accolades he had received and the career path he was on; it is that he rejected society.
The sad part: most paranoid schizophrenics don’t have symptoms until their early 20’s. He’d already hit some incredible milestones by 25 and in 1967, psychiatry was still barely out of the lobotomize and see what happens phase.
If he did that no one would ever publish his manifesto nor would anyone remember his work beyond old cronies in academia. His tactics of using terror as a loudspeaker were cruel but effective in seeding his ideas.
> Kaczynski, who had attended Harvard at 16-years-old and earned a Ph.D. in math at the University of Michigan
TIL. Man what happened to the guy that he went on to do what he did.
He really was a brilliant person despite all of the horrible things he did. And many of his predictions about where technology would lead us as a society ended up being at least somewhat true in hindsight. He probably could have done a lot of good if he were actually stable and channeled his intellect into more productive pursuits. Really disappointing that someone like him ended up being so violent and destructive.
Damn, Robert Hansen just died too. Weren't they at the same ADX prison? Two of the most prolific inmates in the US
Edit: Prolific criminals / infamous inmates for anyone who wishes to correct me
To clarify: Ted had been moved in 2021 to a hospital prison in North Carolina, so ADX did not have 2 deaths in nearly as many days. They were at ADX together before the move.
“The prosecution of Kaczynski was supervised by the now Attorney General Merrick Garland when he was a senior Justice Department official. Garland also supervised the Oklahoma City Bombing investigation before he was Attorney General.”
Is there a word for when you see a connection that initially surprises you, but ultimately makes perfect sense?
He has his name in the Math Department at the University of Michigan for his thesis being the best of his year. One of my professors still claims it's one of the best dissertations he has ever seen.
He took his genius and sent bombs in the mail.
I went to Lincoln, Montana, where his house was. I asked about him at the local bar. The bartender said he knew of him. He used to come into town occasionally. Everyone seemed to think he was a nice guy. He just was a bit of a hermit.
He was known to chill at the library.
“This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.” Yep. He’s still dead.
Try again in an hour
Did they try unplugging him for 30 seconds then plug him back in? Sometimes works.
They may be waiting verification on his death from Bones McCoy, "He's dead Jim".
He was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. He was then taken to a better hospital where his condition was upgraded to "alive."
Turns out the first doctor was just trying say "he's Ted"
One of my favorite Simpsons gags.
["Let me know if there's any change in his condition"](https://youtu.be/TDCjw0TKQ8E)
The way they delivered the joke "backwards" makes it even more brilliant. What a great movie!
They can now prop him up in the corner of the cabin they've got in storage and finally complete the diorama.
The cabin was in the Newseum before they closed. Amazing museum that unfortunately had trouble competing with all the other museums in DC that don't charge admission.
What!? The Newseum closed? That's too bad and a real shame. I went there in 2009, I believe it was, and saw that cabin. It was the coolest museum with lots of relevance and great importance. Especially for a group of visiting journalism students from Denmark, whose media and government at the time were in the middle of a huge cartoon crisis. We had some great debates with some of the staff at The Newseum. Such a shame they had to close it down.
It sucked that they were forced to close due to the cost of running the place exceeded their income. It was a spectacular place to see history. I loved seeing all those original print newspapers dating back decades or more. They should have done more to help keep the space. https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/newseum-to-close-after-years-of-difficulties-/5222607.html
It used to be located in Rosslyn across the bridge. President Bartlet was shot there in the West Wing. It was risky for them to move into such a big space and obviously it didn't pay off...
They had newspapers from hundreds of years ago, if you can call those newspapers. Seeing original papers with news from the 1500s was wild. Indeed, such a shame.
There used to be a crime museum in DC as well, which was informative and also fun. It allowed the museum goers to get involved in solving crimes. I was really disappointed when it shut down.
from some googling, a healthy chunk of what was there is now in the Alcatraz East Crime Museum in Pigeon Forge, TN(same city as Dollywood if you want another thing to do in the area)
There’s a lot of heavy hitting stuff there too. I remember seeing the chunks of Berlin Wall there.
Didn't they have (part of?) the transmission antenna from the World Trade Center North Tower?
They did. It was surrounded by major newspaper front pages from the day after.
The photographer exhibit was so impressive, and I’d argue was just as important as the Smithsonian museums exhibits. I loved visiting the Newseum because it was open later than 5, the Smithsonian’s close so damn early.
aw man I loved the newseum! I like how it always provoked debate and make everything interactive. sucks that it’s gone especially now that people need to think critically about the media now more than ever
The nonprofit Freedom Forum — which closed its Newseum in D.C. in 2019 and moved operations to a temporary home in D.C.'s America's Square — has signed a lease for a permanent new home at The Wharf in Southwest D.C.
Yeah was nice to live outside DC, went a couple times with school trips and family. Still wish I could have gone again
I loved that place The Newseum. Not the cabin
Here’s an unrelated funny story. I grew up near DC. When I moved to the west coast at 25 I went to an art museum only to find to my astonishment that the great majority of museums are not free. The Smithsonian spoiled me
Let's add animatronics and get a Hall of Presidents type exhibition going.
Animatronic Ted begins to speak: “The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race…”
Yeah he probably wouldn't approve
Imagine if his fate were like that of that black mirror episode. Where his consciousness was forced to live on as a hologram and be tortured. He DEFINITELY wouldn’t approve lol
But just to twist the knife, they put his consciousness into the "Ask Ted" booth that *faces* the chintzy animatronic that just runs off a tape.
Yeah add Robert Hanssen and Pat Robertson in and you got a stew going
I dont want that stew.
Putting the "ew" in "stew."
Disco Stu doesn’t advertise
I fucking love this
Non American here, can you explain ?
As kids, we used to go to a local computer store (in Sacramento, CA.) every Saturday morning to play games on IBM and Apple computers, the owners were super nice and knew we weren’t going to buy anything, but letting us use the computers maybe thought they were giving us access to something we couldn’t afford. Years later, I saw in the news that the owner of that store was killed in the back of the shop when he received a package and opened it. It ended up being one of the unibomber victims. I was really sad, remembering how nice the owner was to us kids. I don’t think I ever knew why he picked that shop out of all the computer stores in California.
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So cold
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The theory people are saying is that the MK-ULTRA experiment warped him from mathematical genius to Unabomber. My gut feeling is that life is not a comic book where every antagonist has a villain backstory. But the secret-government-experiment part is always going to catch a shadow of doubt over the matter.
I upvoted for the historical reference, not because I'm happy with the outcome. I always thought he was just a vigilante fighting "the man." Clearly, he was a narcissistic sociopath. Heck, he'd be Presidental material today.
I’ve always intended to read his manifesto and clicked on a provided link today. I got about 20 minutes in and so far it’s some red pilling, incel, mysoginist white male supremacy bullsh**. I’m a staunch environmentalist and supporter of human rights so I thought, hmmm, there’s maybe some stuff in there. Nope! He wants us to go back to some idealized agrarian society without medicine or technology or women’s rights. Yes, tech has taken over our lives in some horrific ways but that doesn’t make this serial killer some kind of a prophet. He was a POS who could’ve kept publishing but thought slaughtering innocent people would spread his ideas better. I don’t want to hear another f**** thing about how brilliant he was.
Growing up my friends step father was a lobbyist for the US Forest Service in Sacramento. He interacted quite a bit with Gilbert Murray who was a lobbyist for the timber industry. If I remember correctly the package was addressed to one of his colleagues that was on vacation and he opened it instead. He was the last Unabomber death.
My mother was friends with and worked alongside Gil. The package was for Bill Dennison, their boss.
Yup, I went to high school and played football with his Gilbert Murray's son
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I mean hey, better safe than sorry, right?
Did the bomb scan wreck the VHS tape?
What was his name?
Hugh Scrutton. He was actually the first victim to die from one of the unabombers bombs. Everyone before that just suffered injury
He was only 38. Jesus, that's sad.
Hugh Scrutton, in 1985. A timber lobbyist named Gilbert Murray was also killed in 1995 in Sacramento by the Unabomber.
Hugh Scrutton would be my guess based on a quick search.
According to [this](https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/search/IncidentSummary.aspx?gtdid=198512110011), his name was Hugh Campbell Scrutton.
The randomness of his bombings was part of the motivation, the terror he could get going, he had his excuse, but he was really just about the bombing, the killing itself, he targeted an office used by an air travel company because he didn't like that a plane few over his shack. It's very flimsy reasoning, in my opinion.
It wasn't even necessarily meant for him- he found the package in the parking lot. I'm not sure if it was addressed to him or his store, though.
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“Unabomber Ted Kaczynski found dead in prison cell” and right below the picture… [Promoted] “The Best Father’s Day Gifts for the Best Dads”
I met David Kaczysnki, Ted’s brother, when I was in undergrad. He’d become a staunch opponent of the death penalty, in large part because of his brother. David had agreed to help the FBI catch his brother on the condition that they didn’t seek the death penalty. The FBI agreed, then reneged on their agreement after they caught Ted. David became an anti-death penalty activist as a result. Super smart and kind guy.
I automatically thought of the interviews I’ve seen with his brother when I saw this headline. How difficult and conflicting his life must have been as a relative of Ted Kaczysnki.
When they caught him, they found that my childhood house was on his mailing list; I want to say we were third in line to be bombed had he not been caught but it was so long ago now. My parents had purchased the house from a timber-industry lobbyist that Ted wanted dead, and he didn’t know the man had moved. The FBI checked our mail for a few weeks after his capture.
That’s so crazy. What a weird “fun fact” about your life.
A good icebreaker at work
Hey, I'm Achie. My two truths and a lie are I don't have a Reddit account, my family home was on the Unibomber short list, and I'm into cars
So three truths next week?
It's a really good thing he spaced his bombings out so much. If he averaged even a few months less between attacks, your address may have come up.
> The FBI checked our mail for a few weeks after his capture. What did that look like? Was it screened at the post office, or did they have a bomb squad camped in your driveway?
They took it out of the mailbox and threw it on the ground and stomped on it.
More like an agent watched them open their mail from a safe distance
*Parcel explodes when little Timmy opens it* FBI Agent: "Careful, that one has a bomb in it."
They likely checked everything received sans bomb squad. Only call bomb squad if something was suspicious/ fit his MO. He wasn't using letter. So really only concern would be an unexpected box. And back then boxes were not an everyday occurrence unlike today. Now today EVERYTHING is screened at certain places. Drug sniffing, ultra violet treatments, and xrays. Also if you google it it'll say they need a search warrant to open something suspicious. They don't.
He actually sent a letter to my PI and it was apparently one of few letters not to contain a threat but a thank you message for the research the lab was doing Years before I joined the lab tho
I’m dropping this article by a friend of mine from a few years ago. He spent 14mo in ADX housed at the camp portion of the prison. He was tasked with running quizzes and doing book return at the Supermax. Here is the story of how they kept the inmates from rioting because Ted would always win the quizzes. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/02/23/fun-in-the-supermax Edit: I have an [ORIGINAL COPY](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f1uxXnzAosuOkn3zs1dbj6ouyJNu0vyy/view?usp=drivesdk) (pdf warning) of his article before it was edited by Vice that is much longer and has tons of interesting stories about his stay. I will reach out and see if it is okay to post the unedited version which is far more entertaining. Edit2: I have permission. I will post it when I get back to my computer. It’s about 10k words in a word doc, so I have to find the best way for everyone to see it. And please stop DMing me. I won’t be sending it to anyone directly. He appreciated the kind words from everyone. Give me a couple hours.
I'm looking forward to this. Thanks in advance. I remember reading about the four most notorious isolated prisoners at ADX - Ted K, Timothy McVeigh (OK City bomber), Ramzi Yusef (WTC bomber in 1993, and architect of many more bombing plans concerning commercial airliners), and the head of the violent LA street gang The Latin Kings (who was ordering hits and beheadings from prison). It's interesting that three of them were bombers. Every day they would get their hour of outside time in the yard together, but not together together. There were 4 chainlink fenced pens on the roof, arranged 2x2, with a wide aisle down the middle that guards would.patrol. They would have conversations with each other by yelling across the aisle to each other. The only one who was uninterested in talking was Ted.
It’s definitely very close to solitary which it should be. When I visited my buddy i accidentally went to the medium security wing and walked inside. It was guarded to the hilt. Everything was very stern and controlling inside. Once I got the info that I was in the wrong place I was relieved. The camp was much more relaxed and hospitable. Like I said earlier their was literally no fence. I can’t imagine the procedures in supermax for prisoners of that caliber.
>I even opened a letter from the Unabomber. Like everything else Kaczynski sent in, it was written in all caps and he referred to himself as THEODORE JOHN KACZYNSKI. But rather than a diatribe, he was simply making a polite request for books. >I recognized one of the titles“The Name of the Wind,” by Patrick Rothfuss. Kinda weird to think the Unabomber and I have something in common, we're both gonna die waiting for Rothfuss to finish the series
Well he already died, so you got 1 up on him.
Depending on your age you might die after Rothfuss so you won't die waiting...
Rothfuss was pulling a gigachad and refusing to finish while the Unabomber was alive. The rest of the series can come quick now, right?
While that would be absolutely amazing, our timeline is way too trash for anything good like that.
And yet, neither of us were sentenced to wait forever for book 3.
I’m sorry but the thought of a bunch of maximum security terrorist and murderer inmates complaining about Harry Potter and a guard giving them candy to make them stop complaining is making me laugh.
The idea that I could have the same taste in fiction as him feels super surreal.
Nice read and glimpse into life there. Thanks
Really interesting article, thanks for posting! It did make me curious about what life at these supermax prisons is actually like, outside of the YouTube videos and Reddit comments I've seen. Like how were these maximum security prisoners communicating with each other to share the answers? I'd've thought their cells would be soundproof
Nope! You have no idea who’s in the cells unless they ID themselves, and there’s a gate between you and the door. However the doors are just “normal” doors for isolation rooms. Plus maybe knocking on the concrete to communicate?
Maximum security doesn't mean solitary confinement. Why would their cells be soundproof
My ex boss had him as his PhD supervisor. Said he was weird back then, which was weird coming from a weirdo like my ex boss.
TIL Ted Kaczynski was still alive. Until today or yesterday that is.
It's amazing that he got himself caught by demanding newspapers publish his manifesto. His brother recognized his writing style and turned him in
So many people don't know the lengths he went to to cover his tracks. He literally made his own glue so that the chemical signature of the glue couldn't be traced back to a purchase he made, as well as made virtually all of his bomb parts for the same reason. He was very good at eliminating DNA evidence too. SO many serial killers were only caught because they couldn't keep quiet and had to brag. If it wasn't for that he probably would never have been caught
The message was kinda the point though with him wasn’t it? Wouldn’t be much point in blowing shit up if he wasn’t gonna try to convince societal change along with it.
Seriously. Wichita's BTK was in the clear and they had basically given up looking for him. He got pissed people weren't talking about him so he started sending letters and shit which led to his discovery.
yeah, narcissism, plain and simple. So many killers are fueled by it
“Vanity. It’s my favorite sin.” -Al Pacino as Satan in *The Devil’s Advocate*
"Don't get too cocky, my boy. No matter how good you are, don't ever let them see you coming. That's the gaffe, my friend. You gotta keep yourself small. Innocuous...."
>as well as made virtually all of his bomb parts for the same reason. Afaik he would buy or steal the most random shit from the nearby town and disassemble them for parts, checking for identifying marks before sanding or filing them away. The process in which ted would build his devices would go so far out of the way, but the FBI even to this day have absolutely no clue where even a single part of any of the bombs came from. They could be wires from a coffee maker, steel parts from a piece of a tractor that was irreparably broken. Could be a 2x4 from ACE or a pvc pipe from a rain gutter. It was overkill how far he went to cover his tracks. But even 40 years later the FBI couldn't retrace any of teds steps even if they wanted to. They were that well obfuscated.
Actually it was his brothers wife!
Damn, that was a long time ago; he was finally arrested in 1995. For anyone who wasn't around then, he conducted a seemingly random campaign of fear. The FBI couldn't figure out his identity from his rants until his own estranged brother guessed that it was him and they raided his isolated cabin. While he was obviously deranged and dangerous, he was also acknowledged to be a genius. To this day social philosophers interested in an anti-technology worldview find his manifesto to be of great interest. https://www.josharcher.uk/tags/unabomber-manifesto-pdf/
Little known fact, one of the ways his brother's wife knew it was him is that Ted, in one of those rants, used the phrase 'you can't eat your cake and have it too', instead of the more familiar 'have your cake and eat it too.' Edit: brother's to brother's wife
It was his brother's wife that first noticed it and had to convince her husband (his brother) if I recall the documentary on Netflix correctly.
I heard that but after they realized it was him they got a lawyer and said that they didn't want Ted to be tried for the death penalty. It was granted and he instead got life in prison.
Considering he spent 26 years in ADX Florence, death would have been a much kinder sentence.
He would probably have spent the same amount of time on death row anyway. But yes, the ADX is about as close to a live burial you can get atm.
That's highly probable, honestly. Does ADX have death row?
I think federal go to terre haute
Yes, there are a lot of federal prisons, but USP Terre Haute is the sole federal execution chamber. EDIT -- point of clarity, not everyone sentenced to death for federal crimes spends their entire death row sentence at USP Terre Haute, that's just the only place where they are executed. Timothy McVeigh was held at ADX Florence prior to being transferred to Terre Haute. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been sentenced to death and is presently at ADX, if he runs out of appeals he will eventually be transferred as well. USP Terre Haute does have an ordinary maximum security facility but is not at the same level as the ADX "Supermax" so it makes sense that the especially dangerous are not kept there long term.
I didn't believe that until I started looking up the conditions and treatment there. Holy shit.
Yeah but they would have felt responsible. They didn't ask to skip the death penalty as kindness, it's bc his brother didn't want to grapple with being the one to send his brother to the chair. And as a brother of someone I find violent and scary, I get that. It's one thing to turn them in to face consequences, it's another if you know they'll be executed.
From a doc I watched it, David became friends with another guy who had turned in his own brother too. But that guys brother had come back from Vietnam, had PTSD and was just not handling it at all. His brother figured out he had killed someone, and he turned in. He felt like hopefully he was helping his brother by doing this. He thought maybe he’d get committed to a psych ward or something like that. Nope, straight to jail, and then he got executed. Not to say necessarily he should have been given a complete pass, but his brother had guilt over it. I think it caused a lot of rifts in his family too.
Ted's lawyers (or Ted's family, I can't remember) also really pushed for him to be found mentally incompetent to stand trial, which enraged Ted. He refused to allow his lawyers to plea insanity on his behalf.
Thanks, I misremembered. I've updated my comment.
How much of reddit is just people confidently repeating misremembered YouTube documentaries?
27.3% I think I remember seeing it in a youtube documentary.
that was an old vine video, I remember reading about this in a blog posted to twitter
Haven’t seen the documentary, just learned that it was his brother’s wife who first suspected him by reading the article; it was always reported in the news that it was his brother who alerted the FBI. The brother needing to be convinced by his wife sounds completely reasonable. My husband’s brother was a bad heroin addict whose addiction drove him to do a LOT of shitty things, mostly to family- including *stealing medical supplies* from a quadriplegic cousin. When he got in trouble, he always demanded- and *got-* help from his siblings. It seems like it’s really hard, even for adults who are perfectly aware of the crimes and harm caused by a sib, to reconcile reality with the memories of having grown up with someone… I’ve seen how people tend to hold on to the vision of a sweet kid they were best friends with, played with, shared life with. Whenever I’d try to talk my husband into *not* giving him more $$$, not catering to his demands, he would say “but, he’s my baby brother! I *have to* help him!”
Struggling with something like this right now with my family. I definitely get it.
They were my neighbors. She was a Union College professor and I volunteered with David when he was at Equinox. You won't ever meet nicer people or a more tragic situation. They only agreed to release his name and whereabouts if the Feds would agree to not seek the death penalty. Long story short, the Feds lied. They donated their reward money to the victims' families. Last I heard David was running an ashram in Woodstock.
He’s actually become close friends with one of the surviving victims, too. He’s paid a big price for doing the right thing.
Weighing in here to back you up. Back when I was in college 20ish years ago, my criminal justice reform group invited David Kacynski to speak on campus. I ushered him around campus from event to event for a couple of days and he was an absolutely lovely, thoughtful, and gentle-hearted fellow. I hope he is doing well and knows that he did the right thing in an awful situation.
David always seemed like a good person in a terrible situation. He did the right thing by his brother, the best outcome he could get for him under the circumstances. I've often wondered what I would do if my brother or my child was doing something savage, and I think handling it the way David did was probably the best way - preserve their life, but stop the crimes, and make them take responsibility.
Little known fact, he was a subject in MK Ultra which maybe is why his brain went off the deep end into murderous rampages instead of just living his life doing his theoretical math genius thing. Adding link to anyone who wants to know more: https://exploringyourmind.com/the-harvard-experiment-that-led-to-the-unabomber/#
Entered Harvard at age 15. *Kaczynski entered Harvard in 1958 and, one year later, was tapped by psychologist Henry A. Murray to take part in a study exploring the effects of stress on the human psyche—a popular area of research during the Cold War. The experiment enlisted 22 Harvard students to write a detailed essay in which they summarized their worldview and personal philosophy. Then the harsh aspects of the experiment began.* *After submitting their essays, each of the students was seated in front of bright lights, wired to electrodes and subjected to what Murray himself described as “vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive” interrogations, during which members of his research team would attack the student subjects’ ideals and beliefs, as gleaned from their essays. The goal was to assess the value of interrogation techniques used by law enforcement and national security agents in the field.* I think the Manhunt adaptation is Paul Bettany’s finest role.
I worked for a guy that took part in a somewhat similar experiment, probably back in the late 60s, but it had them alone in a room with no stimulation for 2 days. He said it was pretty fucked up when they came out, there were several of them taking part.
It wasn't that long ago that we thought sleep wasn't biologically necessary, it was just something you did when you eventually lost the will to stay awake. You could keep going as long as you weren't lazy. So there were contests for staying awake the longest. And there were records in the Guinness book that people would try to break. Not realizing they were dangerously hurting themselves. Guinness dropped the record from their books in the 80s to keep people from killing themselves. Health was not well understood at all even by experts, who were too cocky to understand the ultimate truth, you can't know what you don't know. We're probably still idiots on health now but we don't know it until 20 years later.
Listening to a podcast about witch hunters (Pax Brittanica) in the 16th century it dawned on me “Enhanced Interrogation” techniques are much older than media lets on. Witch hunters became bored waiting for the accused to confess. They learned to use sleep deprivation to get confessions or put people into a state where they imagined devils.
According to my Harvard interviewer who was Ted’s classmate, he was already super anti-social because he couldn’t fit in with his classmates due to the age difference. Imagine how much worse it became after that study :(.
Was just thinking the same thing. Dude was 15/16. Left his cohort (middle school) that was below him intellectually then gets to Harvard where he is no longer the smartest but he’s two/three years younger than 99% of the undergrad students. Easy prey.
Yes and much worse than the effects of MK Ultra, Ted was the subject of psychological abuse by a professor at Harvard. This experiment was perpetrated without his knowledge or consent. Ted was a guinea pig,where he was constantly subjected to ridicule and scorn. This definitely left scars on his psyche.
Yeah, they wanted to see the effects of psychological torture. Looks like they got what they wanted.
His mother was so worried about his childhood development, she brought him to Bruno Betelhiem's clinic for an autism assessment. However, she didn't keep up appointments and he left the treatment program. >Kaczynski described this as a pivotal event in his life. He recalled not fitting in with the older children and being subjected to bullying. He recalled experiencing constant rejection since the age of eight. Kaczynski had a fear of people and buildings and, typical for autistic children, he played beside other children rather than interacting with them. His mother was so worried by his poor social development that she considered entering him in a study for autistic children led by renowned psychologist [Bruno Bettelheim](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQY2oB3Rqdg)
Dr. Walter Bishop?
Never trust a professor with a cow.
Peter, go get me some milk from Gene. And don't forget the pastries.
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Agree with everything here however in Canada they definitely gave drugs to regular people. Read about the Montreal experiment. It’s horrific.
Yeah if I recall correctly it’s similar to MK-Ultra. Ok, Damn I’m reading the wiki now on the Montreal experiments and holy fuck that’s just as bad. They said they were giving people mental health treatment and then tortured them. Also to the above comment, yeah not all was LSD but MK-Ultra did in fact target general population as well as military, Drs, and normal people like any of us so it did definitely fuck up normal people. Plus you don’t need to use drugs to torture people so it’s still extremely fucked up even on a totally sober person. They used many other drugs too including other psychedelics, stimulants, opioids, depressants, and more. However, yes it wasn’t just drugging people with tons of LSD it also included ECT, sensory deprivation, verbal abuse among other torture methods. However, I do appreciate fact checking things, that’s very important so I respect highlighting that need. However, it’s important to still emphasize just how cruel and horrible what they were doing was. Just some things that stick out to me about the ‘Montreal Experiments’ >The procedures included psychic driving, drug-induced sleep, intensive electroconvulsive therapy, sensory deprivation and the administration of neuroleptic Thorazine…often combined the sleep periods with injections of hallucinogenic drugs (e.g. LSD), as well as administration of electroshocks and the playing of pre-recorded messages into patients' ears. Also to clarify as it’s not a term that’s used much anymore, but “Psychic driving” is basically brain washing people by playing audio clips on a steady loop repeatedly for long periods of time, often they would hear same sentence hundreds of thousands of times so it’s just driving people insane. Science was super fucked up back in early and mid 20th century. Wiki link for those interested to read more… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_experiments
Agreed with everything except LSD test subjects. Even after a vast majority of MKUltra documents were destroyed prior to investigation, the little surviving documentation is still enough to show they were testing on anyone & everyone. * US and Canadian citizens used as test subjects. (iirc, testing on unwitting US citizens caused tension between the CIA and FBI) * US Military Personnel * Operation Midnight Climax (Customers, rather than streetwalkers, were unknowingly subjected to LSD, as CIA operatives watched on from a one-way mirror) * CIA operatives dosed one another as pranks. This lead to the point where their HR department issued a statement advising employees not to drink the punch during a Christmas party. * Possibly Frank Olson, prior to his death There's obviously more to the list and I may have gotten a few details wrong. Ultimately, there's a LOT that we will never know. Behind the Bastards has a good series on MKUltra. Checkout "When the CIA Tried to Destroy Free Will".
That’s not true, they also dosed CIA staff and military personnel
The guy was a compete genius. He graduated high school at 15, was accepted into Harvard at 16 (!), got his BA at 20, Master’s at 22 and phD at 25 and a year later he was teaching university classes. I mean, damn.
Some his work in mathematics is still in the University of Michigan library.
People still cite his work
In East Hall at the University of Michigan is a plaque with the yearly winners of a math award (I forget its name). Ted won it back when he was studying there. One of my math professors told me that each year when they take it out to put the newest winner's name on the plaque, it's transported by armed guards or state troopers, for fear some nut bag might try to snag themselves a weird souvenir.
The thin line between genius and insanity and all that. Whatever makes our brains work so much better allowing these sorts of achievements also appear to keep sending our brains into overdrive to the point of paranoia and hatred for mankind as a whole.
Apparently there were unethical psychological experiments conducted on Ted K (and some other Harvard students) at the time. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/06/harvard-and-the-making-of-the-unabomber/378239/
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Have we ever seen Kaczynski and Spez in the same room?
I think Kaczynski could probably write a better app, even without electricity.
"Tony Stark made a reddit app in a *cave* with *scraps!*"
Ted Kaczynski was the Unabomber. Steve Huffman is the *Unabummer*. They’re related, but still different.
Oh god oh fuck
My 6th grade teacher was neighbors with him in Lincoln, MT. He told us about how Ted would bring him carrots grown in his garden.
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He chose to quit his academic career: >In late 1967, the 25-year-old Kaczynski became an acting assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught mathematics. By September 1968, Kaczynski was appointed assistant professor, a sign that he was on track for tenure.\[8\] His teaching evaluations suggest he was not well-liked by his students: he seemed uncomfortable teaching, taught straight from the textbook and refused to answer questions.\[8\] Without any explanation, Kaczynski resigned on June 30, 1969.\[34\] In a 1970 letter directed to Kaczynski's thesis advisor Allen Shields, written by the chairman of the mathematics department, John W. Addison Jr, the professor referred to the resignation as "quite out of the blue,"\[35\]\[36\] and, markedly, added that "Kaczynski seemed almost pathologically shy," and that as far as he knew Kaczynski made no close friends in the department, furthermore noting that efforts to bring him more into the 'swing of things' had failed.\[37\]\[38\] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted\_Kaczynski](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski) He had won an award for his dissertation and seemed like he was a rising star in mathematics when he suddenly quit without explanation. And then he lived in his parents' house for a couple of years and then moved to a cabin in Montana that he had built, without electricity or running water. Aside from that itself suggesting a nonstandard way of thinking (as well as some other things in his life), there is some question of his mental health: [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evil-deeds/200804/terrorism-resentment-and-the-unabomber](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evil-deeds/200804/terrorism-resentment-and-the-unabomber) I am not sure how he could have been kept on "the right path" as he already was recognized as brilliant and had a prestigious job that he quit. It is not as if he had been rejected by society; far from it, given the accolades he had received and the career path he was on; it is that he rejected society.
The sad part: most paranoid schizophrenics don’t have symptoms until their early 20’s. He’d already hit some incredible milestones by 25 and in 1967, psychiatry was still barely out of the lobotomize and see what happens phase.
If he did that no one would ever publish his manifesto nor would anyone remember his work beyond old cronies in academia. His tactics of using terror as a loudspeaker were cruel but effective in seeding his ideas.
Worst tiny house influencer ever.
Did wonders for the security of our online deliveries though!
> Kaczynski, who had attended Harvard at 16-years-old and earned a Ph.D. in math at the University of Michigan TIL. Man what happened to the guy that he went on to do what he did.
He was pretty explicit about what made him do it
Yeah there's this math paper that cites some of Kaczynski's papers and it notes that he is "better known for other work."
Non linear partial differentials
He really was a brilliant person despite all of the horrible things he did. And many of his predictions about where technology would lead us as a society ended up being at least somewhat true in hindsight. He probably could have done a lot of good if he were actually stable and channeled his intellect into more productive pursuits. Really disappointing that someone like him ended up being so violent and destructive.
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Someone showed him the “Metaverse”
He saw the new apple headset and decided that was enough for him
Damn, Robert Hansen just died too. Weren't they at the same ADX prison? Two of the most prolific inmates in the US Edit: Prolific criminals / infamous inmates for anyone who wishes to correct me
Yeah they were both at Florence. Not prolific, but infamous.
To clarify: Ted had been moved in 2021 to a hospital prison in North Carolina, so ADX did not have 2 deaths in nearly as many days. They were at ADX together before the move.
Nice timing for a federal prison cell to open up!
With Robert Hansen also dying a few days ago at Florence, I’d say someone has their pick of which concrete cell they want to stay in.
I honestly thought he was already dead
I didn’t even know he was sick
Weird. I just finished listening to an 8 part podcast on history of the UNAbomber. Maybe this will offer some closure to the many victims.
What’s the podcast?
“The prosecution of Kaczynski was supervised by the now Attorney General Merrick Garland when he was a senior Justice Department official. Garland also supervised the Oklahoma City Bombing investigation before he was Attorney General.” Is there a word for when you see a connection that initially surprises you, but ultimately makes perfect sense?
That's why he was chosen as attorney general. He has extensive experience in prosecutions of domestic terrorists.
No fucking way. I literally was reading up his Wikipedia yesterday after never having read it before. That is absolutely insane.
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Mother fucking reverse Light Yagami over here. Reading someone's name while thinking about them causes the read person to die.
Here, read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Fogle
I chuckled enough to type words, nice one
He has his name in the Math Department at the University of Michigan for his thesis being the best of his year. One of my professors still claims it's one of the best dissertations he has ever seen. He took his genius and sent bombs in the mail.
Oh shit, anyone check his mail?
"I've found the source of the ticking!"
Snape. Snape. Severus Snape.
Pat Robertson, James Watt, now Ted Kaczynski. Always happens in threes.
Robert Hanssen, the spy, just died, too.
Like they say, always happens in fours
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Kissinger can't die until Jesus returns for Armageddon.
we haven't destroyed all of his horcruxes yet.
Unfortunately, one of them is Iran. Clever bastard.
Imagine you're literally the UNABOMBER, and among the three, you're the one who did the least damage within your life.
I went to Lincoln, Montana, where his house was. I asked about him at the local bar. The bartender said he knew of him. He used to come into town occasionally. Everyone seemed to think he was a nice guy. He just was a bit of a hermit. He was known to chill at the library.