This made me think of Ted Kaczynski, who targeted universities but was known as the Unabomber with an a. Looking it up now, I see this originally meant “the university-n-airline bomber,” but until today I had always thought it was just an arbitrary respelling of the prefix uni-.
This morning, less than 12 hours after readings Bill’s post and thinking about the “unaversity” bomber, I saw a small child wearing a sweatshirt that said, “Harvard Universaty, Est. 1636.” Misspellings of famous names are pretty common in Taiwan, especially on children’s clothing, but the timing and the precise nature of the error — university respelled with an a — make it a remarkable coincidence. And Ted Kaczynski’s alma mater was, you guessed it, Harvard.
The word varsity also comes from university, so apparently any vowel in the word can be changed to a.
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The Unabomber was all over the online headlines here in the US today, and will be in the papers tomorrow. They have the suspected killer of the United Healthcare executive in custody now, and all of the news outlets made a point to state that the suspect gave Kaczynski's manifesto a very favorable review on Goodreads.
Some even had the fact in their headlines: For example this one from USA Today: "4 Stars for the Unabomber: 'Person of interest' in CEO slaying reviewed killer's manifesto"
Another weird coincidence. I had no idea. The fact that he gave Ted’s manifesto a good review is an odd thing to latch onto. I’ve never read it myself, but everyone I know who has read it has been impressed. That’s not an abnormal opinion.
only four stars? explains how he got caught so quickly! (joking ofc, but the book is really, really good, and getting more relevant by the day).
The only details I've heard about the killing are via a few comments from associates (one of them, whom knows the US health system quite well, asserts the killer is an industry insider) and Anonymous Conservative's daily posts, but that's enough to see there's definitely something off about it. I wouldn't be surprised if the manifesto focus is part of a misdirection or something.
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