deaths confirmed at UK Ariana Grande concert

CNN is reporting a man suspected to be a possible suicide bomber. go.cnn.com/?stream=cnn%3Fsr

On timing.

These attacks can happen here, too. Trump can block out all the migrants he likes -- terrorists can be homegrown here in the USA, as we've seen.

I don't feel less safe traveling abroad than here -- actually, I feel rather safer overall in most of Europe than I do in NYC. Italy and Spain are not safer than London or Paris.

(The "I won't let you go" thing didn't work on me after high school. My parents didn't want me to go abroad in college, or do any number of things. For me, it just meant I needed to find a way to finance myself. But if anything, it made me more determined to go.  Your kid's mileage may vary.)


ETA:

On the more comforting side, it is still the case that all of us are still quite unlikely to die in a terrorist attack.  I live on the theory that one shouldn't avoid great  life experiences on the basis of events that really quite unlikely. 

I won't be going to Syria any time soon, but I feel no more trepidation about traveling Europe than about traveling here.

Every place seems safer until something happens there that you hear about. E.g , Orlando.

Spain has seen terrorist attacks, though I'm not sure any were Islamic -- yet. Italy has seen violence (and of course, earthquakes recently).

plenty of ways to die besides at the hands of ISIS -- which really still remains quite unlikely.

That doesn't make the terrorist attacks that do happen less heinous. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything about them. But I do think keeping the level of fear proportionate to the risk is important. Terrorists WANT us to feel terrified out of all proportion to the actual risk -- that's their goal. I won't give them that win.

I am among those who lambasted this idiot on Twitter. He did several jokes, each unfunnier than the last.

several things! I was really pissed!

first, "WTF is wrong with you?"

then, when he did a quasi not really "apology", I said "You knew there were fatalities and you were still joking. They weren't even darkly clever jokes. They were just assholish."

and I retweeted his "multiple confirmed fatalities" tweet with this comment:  "I nominate this guy for asshole of the year. This piece of fuckwittery got 3.3k likes. WTF is wrong with people?"

I mean, they were counting bodies of teenage girls, wounded are still lying on the ground...and he's tweeting that kind of crap?  

eta:

Seriously, we all know I like dark humor.  But time, place, manner, the joke and context all matter hugely -- timing alone made this one horrible.  As he tweeted, people were retweeting frantic messages from friends and family of missing concert-goers. No. No. No.