Please correct me if I’m wrong but it’s my understanding he didn’t start the fire that burned much of the Palisades; he started a fire that was put out (or at least was claimed to be so) which rekindled later and the rest is history.
He started a continuous combustion reaction, and Malibu was destroyed by the continuance of that combustion reaction. Whether at some point the orange light it was giving off dimmed a bit is not very interesting. He committed the crime; then emergency services tried to mitigate the damage but failed. These are two fully separate things.
> He started a continuous combustion reaction, and Malibu was destroyed by the continuance of that combustion reaction. Whether at some point the orange light it was giving off dimmed a bit is not very interesting.
So they can prove that this was one continuous combustion reaction? They can show beyond reasonable doubt that, despite the observations of the fire going out that convinced a team of firefighting professionals that it had stopped, it in fact continued and nothing else ignited a new fire in this location where fires naturally occur?
This reasoning would lead to such absurd results in real life, and I am thankful no courts of any country or jurisdiction follow this logic.
For those reading: this is the difference between proximate cause and actual cause. Yes it's true that but for the fire being started in the first place, the fire would not have rekindled. But once professional firefighters arrive to put out the fire, it's not foreseeable by a normal person that the fire could be rekindled, so that person wouldn't be liable. The harm is too remote. The firefighters may even be grossly negligent because they are professionals, intervened, and the fire rekindled. A person negligently failing to fully extinguish their own fire would lead to liability, though.
Extremely incorrect. He set the fire and the fire burned down Malibu. The presence of emergency services does not affect whether he set the fire that burned down Malibu. Whether they succeed or fail in their job of limiting the impact of your crime does not affect whether you committed the crime.
Did he start the fire knowing it could kill people? Did his actions lead to the death of people?
That seems clear cut first degree murder to me, as I understand it (I'm not sure if it requires a specific person to be murdered but a pre-meditated act that kills people seems like it'd qualify to me).
> Did he start the fire knowing it could kill people?
Leaving aside the fact that we don't know yet if he actually started the fire: anyone who starts any fire without appropriate control measures (like extinguishers or containing the fire in something made to contain it) can theoretically be charged under the law for negligence - and practically will, if things go south.
And in a time where there's ample fuel for fires on the ground and the weather conditions are favorable to large fires (e.g. hot, low humidity, clear skies and strong winds) any kind of fire (even smoking - cigarette butts thrown out of car windows are a particularly bad fire source in Croatia) can quickly escalate into a full blown forest fire. Even things that one would not even perceive to be dangerous can cause fires... an all too common occurrence is a diesel car with a freshly regenerated DPF that's being parked on a parking lot that used to be overgrown with weed that's now dried out. The heat from the DPF is massive enough (> 500 °C) to lead to ignition of dried-out weeds (~ 300 °C).
So, it's not a stretch to assume that anyone starting an open fire should know it might escalate into a deadly disaster. And even the reckless cases that I mentioned (smokers, car drivers) can be charged as manslaughter here in Europe.
> Did he start the fire knowing it could kill people? Did his actions lead to the death of people?
I think those things are to be decided in court. As for the charges and times, it's mentioned only the ranges for arson but there's nothing to stop them bringing charges of manslaughter for example. They'll build evidence and charge as such. It's the process.
It is possible and has precedent. Raymond Lee Oyler was convicted of first-degree murder for starting the Esperanza Fire. Five firefighters died fighting the fire.
>Raymond Lee Oyler, 54, of Beaumont, was sentenced to death for starting the Esparanza Fire in October 2006. He was convicted of five counts of first-degree murder, 19 counts of arson and 16 counts of possessing incendiary devices.
https://kesq.com/news/2025/05/05/ca-supreme-court-upholds-de...
I think it was Call of Duty 2 (when the franchise was still WW2-based) when they would show, in my recollection, an anti-war message including this one every time your character died. I think this was absent from later incarnations of the franchise.
And the quotes showed up longer, like 5 seconds, so you could read them in full. Later games would display the quote for 1-2 seconds, which often wouldn’t be enough time to process the full text
Cod 4, World at War, and MW2(?) also did this to my memory. At least one of them did for sure. Not always necessarily anti-war, but historical quotes related to war.
Erm, the evidence for an event that happened 60+ mio years ago and the evidence for an event happening every year that you can watch in real time now is maybe not quite comparable?
Bird migrations aren't that easy to observe with 1822 tech either. It's not like they could stick a GPS recorder on a bird, or mark a bird and follow it in a car. You can make local observations (many birds fly overhead, heading South-East) but with how difficult travel was it's not trivial to piece that together to the conclusion that birds travel from Europe all the way to Africa
During the early age of scientific inquiry in Europe, very few human travelers were following the white stork's migration route (Europe→Anatolia→Levant→Nile→East Africa), and I'd guess that most of those who did were from the Muslim world and not particularly accessible to European observers.
The small number of long-distance travelers and cultural contacts between the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Europe did result in lots of valuable learning; this particular bit of learning just took a while.
To be fair, that was a genuinely crazy idea until the detailed evidence came in. The question itself only comes up after lots of relatively modern science. Similar for plate tectonics.
This is honestly very interesting. I bought a condo that was pre-equipped with Casetas and due to the crappy app I thought “these are budget and terrible” but actually reflecting now they all work tremendously and I haven’t had a problem with any. Goes to show how much an ignorant person (me) can’t recognize function over form
Not that I'm any authority but I'd use "several" interchangeably with "few".
The sibling comment suggestion of using it in the [gap] does make sense though...
There was a contestant on a recent season of Survivor who, iirc, gave up on a challenge because the host said it would take "several hours" to finish. Later the contestant explained that "last I checked several means seven", and about an hour into the challenge he realized he wouldn't last for seven hours, so he quit.. (When the host said "several hours" I believe he meant about 4 hours)
This of course led to much ridicule and many memes in the fandom, and Survivor even titled the seventh episode of that season "Episode Several". In post-season interviews the contestant is still adamant that several means seven.
I put in the web framework that our company’s ecosystem is based on and it said “no results.” At first I thought this was part of the joke, but no, our tech is just beyond dead.
It is the unholy union of a new unregulated form of communication, social media, and unregulated privatized intelligence companies, such as Palantir and Cambrdige Analytica.
Ironically China implemented the GFW because they correctly predicted this exact scenario being used to destabilize themselves.
You can't subject people who were illiterate subsistence farmers who never left their home town 50 years ago to highly processed foreign propaganda and expect good outcomes.
Funnily this (only its local not foreign propaganda) is kind of what's happening in India. The BJP (party in power) is leaning very heavily on propaganda towards the uneducated masses to boost their image.
