Mass shooting in Las Vegas, 2/10/2017

[minime]

Uh, hey guys? Could it be as simple as 'The Strategy of Tension' played out right here at home???
Nah... that's silly.

Yes, Grizzly, it has been mentioned at least four times in this thread.

[stickdog99]

Stick, you've repeatedly refused to look at evidentiary material apparently just because came from posters or sources that weren't always in complete agreement with you. This is very troubling behavior for a lead investigator. You've also repeatedly stated that the main reason you've been so committed to clearing Stephen Paddock's name is because he's a male and you're tired of people immediately assuming males are guilty.

LOL. What? I just think that it is more likely that the actual white millionaire male culprits were not singular, not motiveless, and most especially not suicidal.

You, on the other hand, prefer to believe that unprecedented individual suicidal sociopathy is more powerfully symbolic of our decrepit patriarchy than well-worn patriarchal organizational sociopathy is.

If we consider means, motive, and opportunity from the traditional criminological perspective, which of us has the better case?

And I am not the "lead investigator" of anything. I am simply skeptical of the current official "the most convenient corpse did this totally on his own for no discernible reason" non-explanation. The only reason you are eagerly credulous as far as I can tell is because you find the symbolism of this unprecedented and unlikely explanation pleasing to your own personal political perspective. And that is understandable. If I were viewing this event through my own personal political lens, I may have intuited the same conclusion.

edit: add a missing "as"

[minime]

I think you're both right: The other guy (gal) is wrong.

[minime]

Now what about that Photoshop? job.

[stickdog99]

And I still can’t work out what was up with the other room with the broken window? You know, the one the Aussie was allegedly staying in at the time of the shooting.....

This little factoid has never been explained. How and when did Paddock gain access to this additional adjoining room? Why did he want or need access to this additional room? What was found in this additional adjoining room? Which window was broken first? When were the two windows broken and with what? What was Paddock's motivation to break a second window? Is there any evidence that he (or someone else) shot out of both windows?

[Speculation] He gave the hotel people money and they gave him a key, on the 25th. He wanted it to get a different angle, to shoot at the fuel tanks at McCarran. The small room window was broken first; the first pops you hear on the videos are him firing at the tanks. Then he broke the corner window and started shooting at the crowd. Hammer. Different angle. No real evidence that he ever fired from the small room window, plenty of evidence of shooting from the suite window.

OK, but did he not realize that his chances of exploding tanks of aviation fuel with bullets were nil? A cursory google search would have informed Paddock of this.

[Spook]

An interesting background into the NY Times Video Unit

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/23/insider/reporting-on-las-vegas-pixel-by-pixel.html

Nearly a month has passed since Stephen Paddock opened fire on a country music festival at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, killing 58 people and wounding hundreds more — yet the shooting continues to confound the public and investigators alike. Little is known about Mr. Paddock’s motives. And investigators have revised parts of the timeline of the shooting on three occasions, raising further questions about what exactly happened.

During continuing investigations into major events, traditional reporting often relies in part on official statements from law enforcement officers. But in this case, faced with shifting reports, The New York Times wanted to try to establish a timeline independent of that offered by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

The Times’s video unit, where I am a producer focused on visual and open data investigations, turned to a relatively new technique: investigative video reporting, or so-called video forensics, pioneered and developed by a small community of human rights groups and niche social journalism outlets over the last decade. Its greatest value is in documenting hard-to-reach places like war zones, but the tools can be used wherever there’s an abundance of visual evidence. (In May, a Times video debunked Syria and Russia’s claims about a chemical weapons attack; in June, another video identified 24 men, including members of the Turkish president’s security detail, who attacked protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s Washington residence.)

The approach makes use of every available piece of data in a given set of video files: the videos themselves and every pixel we see in the images, but also the audio tracks and the metadata — timestamps, geolocation information — embedded in the files. The files can come from social media uploads or submissions from witnesses themselves (most cellphone videos log the hour, minute and second they were recorded in file data).

The process can be as simple as comparing a video with Google Street View to identify camera location or extracting file data with a smartphone app — or as difficult as analyzing each frame of a video and the amplitude and frequency of every second of audio.

For our video investigation on the Mandalay Bay shooting, published over the weekend, I gathered and annotated dozens of videos and audio clips recorded at various locations — inside the festival, at the hotel itself and on Las Vegas Boulevard and Giles Street, where the police responded and concertgoers fled. And I searched social platforms and downloaded clips that were verified by wire services, ending up with well over an hour of footage and two hours of police scanner and fire scanner audio.

The bursts of gunfire, 12 in all, served as scaffolding for the timeline. And by analyzing and lining up the audio waveforms of 30 videos filmed by concertgoers, the Las Vegas police and bystanders, my colleague Barbara Marcolini and I reconstructed as closely as possible the complete 10 minutes of the assault.

1/ Here the steps we took and tools we used for our investigation mapping how the Las Vegas shooting unfolded https://t.co/WGjyimEpDA
— Malachy Browne (@malachybrowne) Oct. 23, 2017

Traditional reporting and information-rich visuals and graphics provided additional clarity and precision. The journalists C. J. Chivers, Thomas Gibbons-Neff and David Botti — all former Marines — vetted audio of the gunfire. Mr. Botti and Jon Huang, a journalist in The Times’s graphics unit, helped me count the number of bullets. Video and graphics editors Drew Jordan, Chris Cirillo and Nicole Fineman layered visuals over raw material to explain the evidence. And throughout the investigation, Times reporters in Las Vegas — Jennifer Medina, Julie Turkewitz, Adam Goldman, Mitch Smith and others — relayed information from on the ground.

Our investigation uncovered several key pieces of information. Perhaps most crucially, we were able to approximate the very second the first bullet was fired.

By using data of such variety and quantity, we were able to tell a different kind of story. The Times plans to pursue more like it — so stay tuned.

[stickdog99]

Online I've not found one photograph showing the room numbers and their relationship to Paddock's suite. But either that graphic is incorrect and the Aussie's telling tall tales about being in the room next door to Paddock's. It is possible the Aussie was in the room to the left of the room adjoining the suite and he then would be correct in claiming he was next door to Paddock's room, if in fact he was.

Yeah I suspect he was in 32133, that is he actually was next to Paddock's suite, but wrong about the number.

Interestingly if you go to the Mandalay Bay's website now and look at the suites, you can't click on the Vista Suite, which Paddock's was. It flips back to the menu. The 'little' (500 sqf) room next to it is a resort king, with a bathroom, which it seems can be let on its own unlike what I thought earlier.

Which begs the question, if Paddock actually rented this adjoining room, why? Why did he want or need an additional bathroom and bath in an adjoining room? Wouldn't having two rooms accessible to the hotel staff double the chances of unwanted maid service? Why take this risk for no reason? Because of the adjoining door? There was also no discernible reason to knock out two windows in two separate rooms. If Paddock had wanted a cross breeze to clear the room of the smoke (that, by the way should have been pouring out of the windows), he had a full suite of better options in room 32-135.

[minime]

Asked and answered on multiple occasions.

[stickdog99]

My point for stickdog, one of a number, is that our fair member yhwh was not the only source of information (as stickdog claimed) true or otherwise, re: suite and adjoining rooms. Whether any of the facts presented to us are truetrue is tangential to my post. Not even interesting.

No, what interests you is infantile personal sniping. Have at it, mini-meaning.

Did you notice that the two columns containing the arrival date and the request date, and only those two columns, do not align with the others? That is to say, they are both about 4 points higher than the others. Would you consider that problematic?

Yes. But what would be the photoshop explanation for this discrepancy? I can mock something like that up by (mis)using the cell functionality of Excel. I am not sure why someone would do that on an otherwise pretty professional photoshop manipulation, but I am all ears if you think otherwise.

[stickdog99]

It is very admirable what kind of information has been pulled together by some posters on this site. It is indeed a bit of detective work. But to hear some make claims about how dare the police not release ALL the information, or rip on some posters for not being true investigators is hogwash. Real detective work requires getting your hands dirty. Knocking on doors, rooting through trash, forensics and lots of other stuff. There are limits to what can be done via just the Internet and what you filter out of the MSM. Most good detectives do not read the MSM to do the bulk of their work. The police are under no obligation to release everything they have on a case unless demanded in court. Even then don't expect all. It's incredibly naive to think any law enforcement agency is required to dump all their findings into the public.

Spend some time hanging out with cops, at courthouses, etc....and you will get a different perspective. You don't have to agree with their reasoning, but unless you are totally close minded you can at least come to understand why they do what they do.

Don't take this to be criticism of some hugely important work being done here, but real digging requires your hands to leave the keyboard.

Thanks Karmamatters, I wholeheartedly agree.

I love when people deign to inform any who dare question the official story presented to them by mass media, "Of course, the official story presented to you by mass media is complete bullshit! It is not the police's or mass media's job to present the truth about things like mass shooting investigations. You would have needed to quit your job, abandon your loved ones, and fly to Vegas (preferably three weeks ago) if you actually wanted to get any truth!"

OK, got it. That is extremely helpful information. You first?

[stickdog99]

Uh, hey guys? Could it be as simple as 'The Strategy of Tension' played out right here at home???
Nah... that's silly.

Maybe. But it appears that many people feel that the suicidal mass shooting of complete strangers for no reason whatsoever actually relieves tension.

[stickdog99]

Asked and answered on multiple occasions.

What is your purpose here? Do you just enjoy niggling?

[Spook]

Mandalay Bay window removal and replacement. Levels 31 and 33

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1cZjZet3Vg

Other than the videochop in the last two seconds, the windows appear quite easy to remove.
I read somewhere that one just needs to use a screwdriver to remove an internal fascia and then unscrew the windows (an easy and swift job).

I'm no guru on Google, but can't help thinking that if whoever smashed the windows, causing all sorts of noise, undue attention and mess as the windows shattered to the ground didn't know this, then they could have looked it up reasonably easily?

I mean, for mass impact one would think that discreet preparation would be paramount before the gunfire commenced?
After that point, well, all hell breaks loose anyway.

[stickdog99]

Advance to 5:10 to skip a bunch of unrelated speculation

[minime]

My point for stickdog, one of a number, is that our fair member yhwh was not the only source of information (as stickdog claimed) true or otherwise, re: suite and adjoining rooms. Whether any of the facts presented to us are truetrue is tangential to my post. Not even interesting.

No, what interests you is infantile personal sniping. Have at it, mini-meaning.

Did you notice that the two columns containing the arrival date and the request date, and only those two columns, do not align with the others? That is to say, they are both about 4 points higher than the others. Would you consider that problematic?

Yes. But what would be the photoshop explanation for this discrepancy? I can mock something like that up by (mis)using the cell functionality of Excel. I am not sure why someone would do that on an otherwise pretty professional photoshop manipulation, but I am all ears if you think otherwise.

Their only responsibility in Photoshop would be to align the columns. If they fail their only job, it would hardly be professional.

The software is a turnkey package provided by Service Tracking Systems, Inc., an industry leader. Highly unlikely that they would make such an amateurish error in their coding. Even more unlikely that such an error would be in just the two columns...

No chance, no need that the client would have access to low-level formatting commands. Or what are they even paying for?