Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

… among the most cringeworthy communications in the history of the alphabet!

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

We still have time to mess this up!

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

T R E 4 5 O N

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: “There was a dog-grooming trade show going on and in walk all these people dressed like dogs and foxes”

Open Thread: “There was a dog-grooming trade show going on and in walk all these people dressed like dogs and foxes”

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(More) proof that the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine. From the AP:

Chlorine gas sickened several people and forced the evacuation of thousands of guests from a suburban Chicago hotel early Sunday, including many dressed in cartoonish animal costumes for an annual furries convention who were ushered across the street to a convention center that was hosting a dog show.

Nineteen people who became nauseous or dizzy were treated at local hospitals, and at least 18 were released shortly thereafter.

The source of the gas was apparently chlorine powder left in a 9th-floor stairwell at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare, according to the Rosemont Public Safety Department. Investigators believe the gas was created intentionally and are treating it as a criminal matter…

Pieter Van Hiel, a 40-year-old technical writer from Hamilton, Canada, said the conventions are about having fun with people who enjoy the same hobby.

“This is intense weekend of socialization. It’s kind of weird, but it’s not weird here,” said Van Hiel, who said he writes role-playing games for animals. He laughed as he described being herded out of the hotel and across the street to the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center: “There was a dog-grooming trade show going on and in walk all these people dressed like dogs and foxes.”…

Kinda hoping this is an in-fandom beef, because c’mon — If the idea of people spending their own money to associate with other costumed individuals perturbs you to the point of committing a terrorist act, then it’s not the furries who need stronger supervision.
***********
What else is on the agenda, as we wrap up the weekend?

Reader Interactions

95Comments

  7. 7.

    BGinCHI

    Maybe all of the front-pagers can do a version of this.

    Doug’s will have a reference to the top five greatest songs about furries.

    Elon will post his 73 times.

  8. 8.

    SRW1

    Somehow the guys at the U where I studied chemistry forgot to tell us about that powder form of chlorine.

    That makes me a bit sceptical about the story.

    Looks at the calendar: Hm, can’t be April fools day.

  12. 12.

    Matt

    Perhaps it was the dog-groomers across the way, finally pushed over the brink after one too many “hey, how much to get this dried jizz out of my dog’s fur?” visits.

  13. 13.

    Pogonip

    @Matt: Hee Hee Hee Hee Hee.

    Maybe that’s how Betty’s dog got her tail broken? One of these guys saw her and was overcome with–um, friendliness?

  16. 16.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Probably some christianist asswipe who’s convinced that furries are agents of Satan.

  17. 17.

    Mike E

    Good for Leslie Stahl for taking it to Duke Energy CEO Lynn Good on her utility’s malfeasance, stalling and deliberate inaction on their massive coal ash problem. After Stahl’s earlier lame effort on the California groundwater crisis, a nice 60 Minutes piece. Finally.

  19. 19.

    Pogonip

    Hey, let’s ALL be front pagers!

    In Chicago a furry convention had to move across the street to a dog-grooming convention after a release of chlorine gas.

    You read it here last.

  21. 21.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Pogonip:

    Maybe that’s how Betty’s dog got her tail broken? One of these guys saw her and was overcome with–um, friendliness?

    They are just like sports fans. Prolly happened during the tomahawk chop.

  23. 23.

    Tree With Water

    TV’s ‘CSI Las Vegas’ milked laughs from such furry loving players years ago. In that episode, one of them was the murder victim, who was understandably mistaken by a rifle wielding property owner (at nighttime) for a huge varmint.

  24. 24.

    Howard Beale IV

    @Anne Laurie: That shit’s reactive as all hell. I was in a garage with two other guys and they were mxing it with some other substances- they commented that it was getting hot-5 seconds later-FLASH! huge flames came out of the container. Damn lucky no one was hurt and it didn’t set the garage on fire.

  26. 26.

    Anne Laurie

    @Matt: See, this is why we can’t have nice things.

    Srlsy — if they were into bestiality, it’d be a different kind of convention (not held at the Hynes, for one). Furries like to dress up in costume and play with roles. The impulse is hardly uncommon, just this particular expression.

    People have hobbies. Furries mostly seem to have a sense of humor about theirs, which comments like yours give them yet more chances to exercise.

    I have to be tolerant. When I was 19, I went to comix conventions dressed as an approximation of my favorite superhero. I’m still involved in the only ‘mundane’ hobby where the participants get more social abuse than furries do. At least I don’t paint my face and pay for the privilege to hang around with some thousands of other groupies to watch a bunch of “professionals” kick a ball around…

  31. 31.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @srv: If you can’t marginalize people who dress up like sports team mascots and fuck each other silly, who is left?

  34. 34.

    SRW1

    @Anne Laurie:

    I guess this is an episode of being too highly educated, That pool cleaning stuff is hypochloride (HOCl) or a salt form thereof. What chemists call chlorine is Cl2, a slightly greenish-colored gas, which is why ‘chlorine powder’ to a chemist is an atrocity.

  37. 37.

    Roger Moore

    @SRW1:

    Somehow the guys at the U where I studied chemistry forgot to tell us about that powder form of chlorine.

    They probably meant powdered chlorine bleach, i.e. sodium hypochlorite. If you mix that with hydrochloric acid, you’ll get chlorine gas:

    Cl2 + H2O ⇋ HCl + HClO

  43. 43.

    Soonergrunt

    From the article:

    The source of the gas was apparently chlorine powder left in a ninth-floor stairwell at the hotel, according to the Rosemont Public Safety Department. Investigators believe the gas was created intentionally and are treating it as a criminal matter.

    This was a terrorist attack, using a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Plain and simple. Everybody is giggling about it, but chlorine gas was used in WWI at Ypres, Iraq, and Syria.
    The facts that it seems to have failed, or that the targets are a bunch of weirdos are irrelevant.

  45. 45.

    Anne Laurie

    @Soonergrunt: Well, yeah, that’s one reason I didn’t pull my post back; I did want to point out that it was “committing a terrorist act”, per the OP, whether done by another furry with a personal grievance or some random jackass for lulz.

  48. 48.

    Roger Moore

    @Soonergrunt:

    The facts that it seems to have failed, or that the targets are a bunch of weirdos are irrelevant.

    Irrelevant to you. To a lot of people, it’s very relevant because it isn’t terrorism unless the targets are Us and the perpetrators are Those People. Since there’s no reason to think it was scary, foreign looking people who did it, nobody [ETA: official] is going to call it terrorism.

  49. 49.

    JPL

    I found this comment on the Chicago Tribune..

    Fortunately, someone called the fuzz and they straightened everything out.

  52. 52.

    Mike J

    ABC news on Berkeley: “The protesters went on a rampage by tossing smoke canisters back at the police.”

  53. 53.

    SRW1

    @Soonergrunt:

    The chlorine gas used in WW I was actual chlorine gas, ie Cl2, the stuff used in that story was bleach. Which is also hazardous when inhaled, but it is not a WMD.

    Nonetheless, what the idiots did there was stupid as hell and far beyond any acceptable level of a prank.

  54. 54.

    Heliopause

    @JPL:

    Here’s a fascinating fact: The Bucs are tied for worst record in the NFL. If they had won today they would have been mathematically alive to host a playoff game.

  55. 55.

    BR

    @Mike J:

    The reporting on what happened here in Berkeley last night is amazingly bad. There’s virtually no reporting on the fact that if the police hadn’t been there the night would have passed with little incident. The police’s actions were the thing we feared the most and is why we didn’t venture out of our home.

  56. 56.

    opiejeanne

    @Soonergrunt: Thank you.

    My son and his friends are furries and host an annual con in SoCal. Some of the costumes are amazing.

    It’s not a far leap from working at Disneyland as a “head character”, aka a “fuzzy”, to what these people do except the vast majority couldn’t get through the auditions; they have a lot of admiration for the Fuzzies. and being a furry doesn’t require passing an audition. I have heard them talk about this and think it’s a form of being a fan that evolved into something else.

    Don’t get me started on the physical abuse Fuzzies at the House of Mouse endure from park visitors.

  59. 59.

    Baud

    @JPL:

    The NFC South is a sorry excuse for a division.

    ETA: All four teams would probably lose in a pick-up game against the furries.

  61. 61.

    Woodrowfan

    @SRW1:

    The chlorine gas used in WW I was actual chlorine gas, ie Cl2, the stuff used in that story was bleach. Which is also hazardous when inhaled, but it is not a WMD.

    Assuming that whoever used it actually knew the difference…

  62. 62.

    BR

    @Mike J:

    Oh my god…they’re at it again. Helicopters just returned to the skies here in Berkeley. Do they really think that this sort of aggressive police deployment is going to help win the city’s voting population to their side? Or do they think they’re immune to public sentiment?

  65. 65.

    opiejeanne

    @Mnemosyne: Like who? The article didn’t mention any other group using the site and the people hauled off to the hospitals were at the furry convention, from what I read. .

  67. 67.

    Mnemosyne

    @opiejeanne:

    That’s why I’m wondering. A lot of those hotels host multiple groups in a weekend, so unless the police think that the furries were deliberately targeted, I can’t help wonder if there was a different intended target.

    It’s partly because I can’t even imagine someone being so angry about people who are furries that they would try to injure total strangers over it. It’s just a weird thing to get that upset about.

  68. 68.

    Mike J

    @Mnemosyne:

    It’s partly because I can’t even imagine someone being so angry about people who are furries that they would try to injure total strangers over it. It’s just a weird thing to get that upset about.

    I can see you’ve never been to 4chan.

  69. 69.

    Belafon

    OK, so this is annoying, I’m trying to post a link to the wikipedia entry for calcium hypochlorite, also known as chlorine powder. The first two wouldn’t let me paste it as a link, so I put the actually link in as text. That entry is still not displaying, but it’s reporting that I’ve already posted it.

  70. 70.

    ArchTeryx

    This has been said before, but it’s super easy to make a chlorine bomb. I used to do it myself, for my science research – take a plastic bucket with a tightly sealing lid under a fume hood. Put a beaker of bleach in it. Add concentrated hydrochloric acid and seal that sucker *fast*. Makes a great homemade sterilization chamber. It also works – all too well – with sodium hypochlorite, hypochlorous acid, and other chlorine-containing powders, easily available at any pool store.

    This was, at the absolute least, the most malign sort of griefing imaginable. It also could have killed people, did hospitalize several and drew a full three alarms worth of hazmat response. The entire hotel had to be evacuated.

    Yes, I’m one of those evil, perverted, twisted furries, who used to attend this very convention. I also hope that, once the FBI gets involved, they catch the little f*ckers that did this and hang them up by their Buster Browns.

  71. 71.

    Mnemosyne

    @opiejeanne:

    G’s theory is that it might be a domestic violence kind of thing with an ex attacking someone they knew would be at the convention, which is sadly all too plausible.

    ETA: Or , as ArchTeryx seems to be saying, immature griefers going, Hur hur, let’s mess with the furries. A lot of people don’t realize that chlorine gas is actually really fucking dangerous and not just a stink bomb. Hopefully they have stairwell camera footage.

  72. 72.

    Baud

    @ArchTeryx:

    I also hope that, once the FBI gets involved, they catch the little f*ckers that did this and hang them up by their Buster Browns.

    All jokes aside, I’m confident we all want that.

  73. 73.

    Belafon

    One more time: For some reason, the wikipedia link for chlorine powder, calcium hypochlorite, doesn’t want to post, so here’s the link: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_hypochlorite.

  75. 75.

    Gin & Tonic

    @ArchTeryx: I once opened a canister of pool chlorinator that had gotten some water in it over the winter. Literally knocked me on my ass.

  76. 76.

    Tree With Water

    @opiejeanne: Furries are a lot like Shriners when they’re in their fez wearing, riding tricycles mode (their other mode being caring for for desperately ill children).

  77. 77.

    Roger Moore

    @Mnemosyne:

    It’s partly because I can’t even imagine someone being so angry about people who are furries that they would try to injure total strangers over it. It’s just a weird thing to get that upset about.

    I can totally see it. Some furries make a fetish of it, which classifies them as sexual deviants in the eyes of people who intolerant of that kind of thing. The same kind of people who want to murder gays for being who they are could easily want to murder furries for the same reason.

  78. 78.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Bob In Portland:

    Though it’s difficult for an outsider to ascertain the relative merits of these insider deals, they could reflect negatively on Jaresko’s role as Ukraine’s new finance minister

    So, in other words, complete speculation. Thanks.

    “Investing in historically corrupt emerging markets is complex, and I don’t know anything about any of the details, but it could be bad news.” That’s the article.

  79. 79.

    ArchTeryx

    @Roger Moore: Furries get a lot of crap from other fandoms, and they attract a hell of a lot of trollollololol griefers. Have since they were a little gay subculture in Southern California back in the 80s.

    But Midwest Furfest – don’t ask me why – has always been a particular target of this particular subcreature. Previous years, it was pulling false fire alarms at 3am, forcing everyone out into the cold for an hour. The fire department was Not Amused, but they couldn’t do much to put a stop to it.

    This was escalation in a big way, and this time, there was serious collateral damage. I don’t often cheer the FBI in anything, but I am cheering them on now. Someone needs to be taught a life-altering lesson.

  80. 80.

    Anne Laurie

    @Pogonip: ‘Zackly!

    (Still hope it turns out to be one of the Furry tribe who was angry at the con runners / hotel staff / one or more of the other Furries. That would be stupid & counterproductive and also criminal, but not as inexplicable as a random stranger deciding All Furries Must Die, for Reasons.)

  81. 81.

    ArchTeryx

    @Anne Laurie: IF it holds to the pattern, it’ll be neither one of the tribe nor a terrorist – just some human derp who read a bit of the Anarchist’s Cookbook and decided it’d be really fun to set off the grandaddy of all toxic stinkbombs at the furfags’ convention.

    I do recall that, after the third false alarm, the hotel started putting tiny cameras near the fire alarms, and one of said human derps got caught pulling ANOTHER alarm. He was prosecuted. The false alarms finally stopped, and there were some nice, quiet years.

    That being said, if a furry really is that malign and clueless, they deserve prosecution no less. I may be a partisan SOB, but “my tribe right or wrong” isn’t part of my value system!

  82. 82.

    Roger Moore

    @ArchTeryx:

    But Midwest Furfest – don’t ask me why – has always been a particular target of this particular subcreature.

    It could be as little as a single, particularly vicious person. It only takes one asshole to pull a fire alarm or set up this kind of thing.

  83. 83.

    srv

    Why isn’t there a Hippie Punching Tour for rednecks?

    Back in the day, rich foreigners would fly into Beirut to hunt people from hotel roofs. Clearly, Berkeley is not gentrifying fast enough.

    I would like to see a remake of The Gauntlet with a Google bus, though. Who would star?

  86. 86.

    Alex

    I used to think furries were weird, until I heard about Rubber Dolls. AYFKM?

    CSI is a great place to learn about weird shit.

  88. 88.

    NotMax

    Nineteen people who became nauseous or dizzy

    While 19 people may or may not have made others feel ill, that has nothing to do with their own exposure to toxic fumes. What the 19 became was nauseated, not nauseous.

    Weep for the proofreaders and editors of yore.

  89. 89.

    NotMax

    @Mnemosyne

    Could just as easily have been an absent-minded, inept, sloppy, untrained or otherwise diverted maintenance worker who accidentally left something behind.

    Having work experience in a large resort hotel at one point, not at all outside the realm of possibility.

  92. 92.

    Howard Beale IV

    @Gin & Tonic: With the way the dollar is crushing both Russian and Ukrainian currencies it certainly isn’t helping them any. BinpP’s site is also not exactly being open about who’s backing them, either-not exactly a good sign of honest dialog there, ¿no? At least you know what you’re getting with First Look, Pando and now Bezos’ new vanity project-no so with “Russia Insider”.

  93. 93.

    Mnemosyne

    @NotMax:

    It’s possible, but given what ArchTeryx is saying about harassment in previous years of the same event at the same location, I wouldn’t bet money on it being a coincidence.

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