Tumbler Ridge ⇥ thewalrus.ca

Though I want to write about many things on my own website, I sometimes struggle to find a way to do so. That can be because I do not have enough experience or expertise, or I cannot add something meaningful. And then there are the things that leave me without words. The mass shooting two weeks ago in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, is one such tragedy.

The murder of six children — five in their school — and two adults is difficult to comprehend. Nearly thirty more were injured, one of whom — a twelve-year old child — is recovering from serious wounds in a Vancouver hospital. We remain a nation in mourning.

Christina Frangou, the Walrus:

Grief at this magnitude is crushing anywhere, but especially in a place so little. The numbers of dead leave a different-sized hole in the social architecture of a place where everyone knows where everyone lives. The people of Tumbler Ridge will see their streets differently now — which road has a house that is home to someone who has died or was injured or at school that day. “I will know every victim,” Mayor Darryl Krakowka told the CBC in those early hours when Tumbler Ridge waited to find out the names of the casualties.

I process events through writing — but, here, all I can think to write is: everything about this is devastating.

Georgia Wells, Wall Street Journal:

Months before Jesse Van Rootselaar became the suspect in the mass shooting that devastated a rural town in British Columbia, Canada, OpenAI considered alerting law enforcement about her interactions with its ChatGPT chatbot, the company said.

While using ChatGPT last June, Van Rootselaar described scenarios involving gun violence over the course of several days, according to people familiar with the matter.

The documentation of a murderer’s online footprint is a now-familiar pattern after a tragedy like this one. It sometimes reveals behaviour that, in hindsight, would have raised alarms to someone who knew the fuller picture. But each of these things is, for good reason, siloed — what the police know, what a social worker may be aware of, and what OpenAI is notified about.

Caring communities can help bridge those cracks. Not because people come together to increase surveillance, but through actual compassion and interaction. I am not saying love is the key to preventing mass shootings; I am not diagnosing a problem here. It is a time of grief like this when we can so viscerally recognize that none of us are alone.