this story never made sense to me. he disassembled a digital clock then put the pieces in a pencil case? he didn't fabricate it or design any of the electronic components; what was he supposed to be demonstrating, that you can put a digital clock in new case? also his dad was a sudanese opposition politician??
I used to take apart electronics and sometimes show the internals to people. Most folks haven't really looked inside any electronic device and don't know what the components look like or do, so it can be an interesting thing to share.
In this case it says he wanted to show it to an "engineering teacher" (wish my high school had that). I once printed out an entire program I wrote and tried to show it to the teacher who ran our computer lab.
Yeah, I could see if he was 8, taking an electronic component, stripping all the insides and moving it into new box and plugging it in sounds very plausible. But doing it 14, and then using what looks like a suitcase, where more than one adult thought it was a bomb, makes his story that it's just a "clock" a bit hard to believe.
Moreover, the first teacher he showed it to, urged him to keep the devices in his backpack and not take it out [1]. But he didn't, so that indicates he wanted really hard to get a reaction, and he set the alarm off in another class. Another strike against their story is the speed with which they demanded $15m from the school district.
[1] His engineering teacher, upon seeing the clock said, "That's really nice", but advised him to keep the device in his backpack for the rest of the school day.
Not only was he told not to take it out of his backpack, he whipped it out in English class, plugged it into the wall, set the time, and then caused the alarm to go off. he was purposefully seeking attention.
His family filed three lawsuits against various parties, all dismissed, two with prejudice, and they were ordered to pay legal costs in two of the three cases.
His father was an eccentric type who had twice tried to run for president of Sudan.
Sure seems like an intentional ploy to get a reaction from staff that could be labeled Islamophobia, though I would blame the father more than the kid.
Ehh. I'm sure any number of equally awkward HN commenters at 14 might have done the same, and if they weren't muslim, gotten the benefit of the doubt instead of being hauled off to the police dept.
Getting to whine about it from the comfort of your keyboard is a privilege, yes.
Any of us who have the wealth to buy a computer, put food on our tables, pay all of our bills, and have spare time to wax poetic on an internet forum are certainly privileged.
Privilege is not an accusation, it's a lens to understand how people experience the world from different perspectives.
Right, and I'm using it here as a lens to try to understand how a little brown boy can be invited to the White House to meet the president as a misunderstood engineering prodigy, while my experience is that this would see a little White boy ignored (because this is nothing special tbh), shunned (for being a nerd), or even expelled (for trolling the school with a fake bomb).
It sounds weird when you put it that way because that's not what happened.
> he disassembled a digital clock then put the pieces in a pencil case?
The Wikipedia article does say he "reassembled" the clock but if you check out the linked source The Dallas Morning News is very clear that it is a homemade.
He did not disassemble a digital clock and reassemble it in another case. He took existing parts and built them into a clock.
From the pictures my guess would be that he took an existing clock and connected it to that older 8 segment display (he may have also changed the power source photos are inconclusive but I don't see a 9 volt in the 9 volt reciever/mount point).
i don't have one because it makes no sense! but frankly if it were me at that age i probably would have been showing it to my friends because it looked like a bomb
It's a 14 year old kid. He wasn't demonstrating anything.
He took apart a clock, stuck in back in a different case, wanted to show his teacher that in a, I am guessing : "Hey look, I took all this apart, and managed not to destroy it"..
Honestly, this entire event shows me two things:
1. The jumps people make to crazy assumptions when faced with someone they don't like because of ideological reasons.
2. The low level of technological acumen/knowledge to assume that this is even similar to a dangerous device.
Nearly 30 years ago, as a kid with way too much free time and a budding interest in questionable DIY projects, I decided to stroll into a hardware store and try to buy some very suspicious items I'd read about in an online forum.
The saleswoman, bless her soul, looked genuinely concerned as she told me she couldn't sell me what I asked for. Then came the inevitable: "So... what exactly are you planning to do with this stuff?"
Without missing a beat, I launched into an impassioned explanation about how absolutely epic it would be to blow up this colossal ant nest I'd discovered in our neighborhood.
What followed wasn't the cool supplies or cheers I imagined but a long-winded lecture about how ants are living beings too, and how it's "definitely not okay" to blow them up. No cops. No parental intervention. Honestly, that lady could've reported me to my parents or even the authorities, but nope! This was Istanbul, and I happened to be a "local" (Funny because there are no locals in Istanbul) kid with lighter skin and blue eyes. So, all good!
But as I got older, I realized how lucky I was. If I'd been darker-skinned or Kurdish (which, back then, was basically a surefire way to get labeled a "terrorist" in the media), things could've gone very differently. Today, it's Syrians who face the brunt of the suspicion. Tomorrow? Who knows!
What I've come to understand is that this kind of dumb, knee-jerk profiling based on race and appearance is everywhere. Humans are exceptionally good at spotting patterns (real or imaginary) and we'll keep doing it as long as we're fed bad (or any, really) information. Even now, living as a migrant in Europe, I get my fair share of this nonsense. Some things, unfortunately, never change.
Dallas area schools are really big on the "zero tolerance". My experience was that they care very little about nuance or judgement, just following the rules strictly
I really wonder why people are defending such a clear racist incident. Is it a self defense mechanism that the society can treat some segments very badly or what
People are even bending the facts to try to blame it on a 14 years old. I wonder if even if he tried a prank or something (which is a claim that wants to be proved) then does it require that kid to be detained and escorted into detention facility? I mean if it was misunderstanding, wouldn't this get solved quickly. They could have just checked that it is not a bomb, apologies and then life goes. Even after the case waa found that it is clear misunderstanding, He got suspended from school.
I wonder also if people did actually read the contents of the Wikipedia article because their claims are not even in alignment with that. The attacks and conspiracy theories that this kid and his family received is very sad. He even had to leave the US. There ia one claim that this is just a setup by his politician father and the suitcase was filed quickly suggesting malicious intent. They failed to mention that his father was a political rival to the dictator and war criminal wanted be the ICC Omar Elbashir and that he moved to the US in the 80s and lived significant portion of hia live there.
I think people on HN can be better than to spread conspiracy theories and avoid racism.
I read the Wikipedia article and my best guess is that Ahmed was intentionally attempting to get a reaction out of those around him by showing off a clock he built intentionally to look like a bomb…
I’m a white male but actually had a similar thing happen to me during school. (I brought a water gun to school and people expressed that even bringing a toy gun to school could get you into trouble and to hide it for the rest of the day). So I don’t know how much race was truly a factor.
In my opinion you are being closed-minded to other possibilities.
> In my opinion you are being closed-minded to other possibilities.
Maybe I'm a little bit closed to other possibilities (the same way a lot of people trying to advocate that this wasn't actually racist incident). Occam's razor plays a factor for me too.
> I’m a white male but actually had a similar thing happen to me during school
But lets compare your experience as a white kid. you did not get you English teacher calling the police on you after taking your stuff. You did not get arrested by the police who not only question you but took you to a detention center and did not make Mug shot for you. You did not got into much troubles because of maybe you were lucky. You did not got to leave the country because a lot of conservative shows and figures spreading conspiracy theories and attacking you.
You can say that you believe that this 14 years old kid was trying to to get reaction but this is a claim that you can support because you don't have a way to get back in 2015 neither do you have a way of reading people's mind. I believe this is even irrelevant. After police was called and things clarified ,the redirection to detention facility and the suspension of school (after everything cleared) and the conspiracy theories are what makes this racist incident. If the school just called cops and they dealt with it differently, there is a good chance that we weren't going to hear about that.
So comparing your experience and white male (non-Muslim I guess and sorry if this was not true) against a black Muslim kid yielded two different outcomes.
It's 2024 and not 2014. 5 years from here, critical race theory could be about "removing" certain races because of their inferiority. The reality is that society has no safe-guards against such derailing and the worst part is that government will just "buy-in" into whatever popular theory is going on today.
> I think people on HN can be better than to spread conspiracy theories and avoid racism.
HN users tend to think they are more logical and thus, somehow more immune to racism, while failing to understand that's simply not how racist attitudes develop.
The fact that they moved is even more sad. Discrimination is at its peak. I wonder if an american kid puts a nuclear sticker to its laptop, would people react the same way.
To be the devil's advocate, wouldn't this be the same if a white kid from the Bronx dresses up as a ghost to school, only to be arrested for coming to school in a Klan uniform? To me it seems to be a huge misunderstanding on all sides.
No it wouldnt. İf I leave a mustache like hitler, no one believes that I am hitler, but instead this would be advertasing it. Which is still wrong, but this would be wrong regardless of my background. İn this instance, they actually believed the kid would make a bomb, just because of his name. I wonder any kid with different name would go through the same.
Because if not, you've accidentally proved the racism in this incident, because we can already turn up news reports of misunderstood nerdy islamic kids, but find no arrests of caucasian supernatural enthusiasts.
A nonexistent, hypothetical strawman doesn't bolster your argument.
It looked like a bomb and he was told by teachers to keep it put away. He even made the alarm go off in class. His father, a politician, turned it into an incident.
He experimenting hours and was proud of what he did. He wanted to show it to as many as possible, so he ignored what the teacher said. He was interrogated. Why more than one hour? It could have taken less then 10 minutes if you ask the teacher. Why was he handcuffed later? The police clearly wanted to make a statement or show.
this story never made sense to me. he disassembled a digital clock then put the pieces in a pencil case? he didn't fabricate it or design any of the electronic components; what was he supposed to be demonstrating, that you can put a digital clock in new case? also his dad was a sudanese opposition politician??
I used to take apart electronics and sometimes show the internals to people. Most folks haven't really looked inside any electronic device and don't know what the components look like or do, so it can be an interesting thing to share.
In this case it says he wanted to show it to an "engineering teacher" (wish my high school had that). I once printed out an entire program I wrote and tried to show it to the teacher who ran our computer lab.
A lot of younger people today would be surprised you can remove a digital clock from its case and it'll still work.
Like, a phone or any piece of technology is just a black box. If it breaks nowadays, you're expected to throw it away or fully replace it.
As a 14 year old kid, I did this sort of thing all the time. Also I was trying to build bombs.
I remember the incident in the news.
Yeah, I could see if he was 8, taking an electronic component, stripping all the insides and moving it into new box and plugging it in sounds very plausible. But doing it 14, and then using what looks like a suitcase, where more than one adult thought it was a bomb, makes his story that it's just a "clock" a bit hard to believe.
Moreover, the first teacher he showed it to, urged him to keep the devices in his backpack and not take it out [1]. But he didn't, so that indicates he wanted really hard to get a reaction, and he set the alarm off in another class. Another strike against their story is the speed with which they demanded $15m from the school district.
[1] His engineering teacher, upon seeing the clock said, "That's really nice", but advised him to keep the device in his backpack for the rest of the school day.
>where more than one adult thought it was a bomb
Clarification: more than one American adult, where collectively some states/localities are more likely to jump at shadows than others..
Not only was he told not to take it out of his backpack, he whipped it out in English class, plugged it into the wall, set the time, and then caused the alarm to go off. he was purposefully seeking attention.
His family filed three lawsuits against various parties, all dismissed, two with prejudice, and they were ordered to pay legal costs in two of the three cases.
His father was an eccentric type who had twice tried to run for president of Sudan.
Sure seems like an intentional ploy to get a reaction from staff that could be labeled Islamophobia, though I would blame the father more than the kid.
Ehh. I'm sure any number of equally awkward HN commenters at 14 might have done the same, and if they weren't muslim, gotten the benefit of the doubt instead of being hauled off to the police dept.
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Getting to whine about it from the comfort of your keyboard is a privilege, yes.
Any of us who have the wealth to buy a computer, put food on our tables, pay all of our bills, and have spare time to wax poetic on an internet forum are certainly privileged.
Privilege is not an accusation, it's a lens to understand how people experience the world from different perspectives.
Right, and I'm using it here as a lens to try to understand how a little brown boy can be invited to the White House to meet the president as a misunderstood engineering prodigy, while my experience is that this would see a little White boy ignored (because this is nothing special tbh), shunned (for being a nerd), or even expelled (for trolling the school with a fake bomb).
To me it seems like a prank. He made something that looked like a bomb from movies, basically.
It sounds weird when you put it that way because that's not what happened.
> he disassembled a digital clock then put the pieces in a pencil case?
The Wikipedia article does say he "reassembled" the clock but if you check out the linked source The Dallas Morning News is very clear that it is a homemade.
He did not disassemble a digital clock and reassemble it in another case. He took existing parts and built them into a clock.
From the pictures my guess would be that he took an existing clock and connected it to that older 8 segment display (he may have also changed the power source photos are inconclusive but I don't see a 9 volt in the 9 volt reciever/mount point).
What's your explanation?
i don't have one because it makes no sense! but frankly if it were me at that age i probably would have been showing it to my friends because it looked like a bomb
It's a 14 year old kid. He wasn't demonstrating anything.
He took apart a clock, stuck in back in a different case, wanted to show his teacher that in a, I am guessing : "Hey look, I took all this apart, and managed not to destroy it"..
Honestly, this entire event shows me two things:
1. The jumps people make to crazy assumptions when faced with someone they don't like because of ideological reasons.
2. The low level of technological acumen/knowledge to assume that this is even similar to a dangerous device.
It’s cool in a way. I know I was opening all of my toys at that age and making modifications to them.
Nearly 30 years ago, as a kid with way too much free time and a budding interest in questionable DIY projects, I decided to stroll into a hardware store and try to buy some very suspicious items I'd read about in an online forum.
The saleswoman, bless her soul, looked genuinely concerned as she told me she couldn't sell me what I asked for. Then came the inevitable: "So... what exactly are you planning to do with this stuff?"
Without missing a beat, I launched into an impassioned explanation about how absolutely epic it would be to blow up this colossal ant nest I'd discovered in our neighborhood.
What followed wasn't the cool supplies or cheers I imagined but a long-winded lecture about how ants are living beings too, and how it's "definitely not okay" to blow them up. No cops. No parental intervention. Honestly, that lady could've reported me to my parents or even the authorities, but nope! This was Istanbul, and I happened to be a "local" (Funny because there are no locals in Istanbul) kid with lighter skin and blue eyes. So, all good!
But as I got older, I realized how lucky I was. If I'd been darker-skinned or Kurdish (which, back then, was basically a surefire way to get labeled a "terrorist" in the media), things could've gone very differently. Today, it's Syrians who face the brunt of the suspicion. Tomorrow? Who knows!
What I've come to understand is that this kind of dumb, knee-jerk profiling based on race and appearance is everywhere. Humans are exceptionally good at spotting patterns (real or imaginary) and we'll keep doing it as long as we're fed bad (or any, really) information. Even now, living as a migrant in Europe, I get my fair share of this nonsense. Some things, unfortunately, never change.
Dallas area schools are really big on the "zero tolerance". My experience was that they care very little about nuance or judgement, just following the rules strictly
I really wonder why people are defending such a clear racist incident. Is it a self defense mechanism that the society can treat some segments very badly or what
People are even bending the facts to try to blame it on a 14 years old. I wonder if even if he tried a prank or something (which is a claim that wants to be proved) then does it require that kid to be detained and escorted into detention facility? I mean if it was misunderstanding, wouldn't this get solved quickly. They could have just checked that it is not a bomb, apologies and then life goes. Even after the case waa found that it is clear misunderstanding, He got suspended from school.
I wonder also if people did actually read the contents of the Wikipedia article because their claims are not even in alignment with that. The attacks and conspiracy theories that this kid and his family received is very sad. He even had to leave the US. There ia one claim that this is just a setup by his politician father and the suitcase was filed quickly suggesting malicious intent. They failed to mention that his father was a political rival to the dictator and war criminal wanted be the ICC Omar Elbashir and that he moved to the US in the 80s and lived significant portion of hia live there.
I think people on HN can be better than to spread conspiracy theories and avoid racism.
I read the Wikipedia article and my best guess is that Ahmed was intentionally attempting to get a reaction out of those around him by showing off a clock he built intentionally to look like a bomb…
I’m a white male but actually had a similar thing happen to me during school. (I brought a water gun to school and people expressed that even bringing a toy gun to school could get you into trouble and to hide it for the rest of the day). So I don’t know how much race was truly a factor.
In my opinion you are being closed-minded to other possibilities.
> In my opinion you are being closed-minded to other possibilities.
Maybe I'm a little bit closed to other possibilities (the same way a lot of people trying to advocate that this wasn't actually racist incident). Occam's razor plays a factor for me too.
> I’m a white male but actually had a similar thing happen to me during school
But lets compare your experience as a white kid. you did not get you English teacher calling the police on you after taking your stuff. You did not get arrested by the police who not only question you but took you to a detention center and did not make Mug shot for you. You did not got into much troubles because of maybe you were lucky. You did not got to leave the country because a lot of conservative shows and figures spreading conspiracy theories and attacking you.
You can say that you believe that this 14 years old kid was trying to to get reaction but this is a claim that you can support because you don't have a way to get back in 2015 neither do you have a way of reading people's mind. I believe this is even irrelevant. After police was called and things clarified ,the redirection to detention facility and the suspension of school (after everything cleared) and the conspiracy theories are what makes this racist incident. If the school just called cops and they dealt with it differently, there is a good chance that we weren't going to hear about that.
So comparing your experience and white male (non-Muslim I guess and sorry if this was not true) against a black Muslim kid yielded two different outcomes.
It's 2024 and not 2014. 5 years from here, critical race theory could be about "removing" certain races because of their inferiority. The reality is that society has no safe-guards against such derailing and the worst part is that government will just "buy-in" into whatever popular theory is going on today.
> I think people on HN can be better than to spread conspiracy theories and avoid racism.
HN users tend to think they are more logical and thus, somehow more immune to racism, while failing to understand that's simply not how racist attitudes develop.
The fact that they moved is even more sad. Discrimination is at its peak. I wonder if an american kid puts a nuclear sticker to its laptop, would people react the same way.
To be the devil's advocate, wouldn't this be the same if a white kid from the Bronx dresses up as a ghost to school, only to be arrested for coming to school in a Klan uniform? To me it seems to be a huge misunderstanding on all sides.
No it wouldnt. İf I leave a mustache like hitler, no one believes that I am hitler, but instead this would be advertasing it. Which is still wrong, but this would be wrong regardless of my background. İn this instance, they actually believed the kid would make a bomb, just because of his name. I wonder any kid with different name would go through the same.
Can you dig up any instances of that happening?
Because if not, you've accidentally proved the racism in this incident, because we can already turn up news reports of misunderstood nerdy islamic kids, but find no arrests of caucasian supernatural enthusiasts.
A nonexistent, hypothetical strawman doesn't bolster your argument.
> Discrimination is at its peak.
It could just as easily be comically inept authority figures. I got suspended for less than this (in violation of state law).
I assume he was born in Texas, where his dad lived. (And was thus American.)
Correction; a kid named Truman
It looked like a bomb and he was told by teachers to keep it put away. He even made the alarm go off in class. His father, a politician, turned it into an incident.
It could be this, or it could be:
He experimenting hours and was proud of what he did. He wanted to show it to as many as possible, so he ignored what the teacher said. He was interrogated. Why more than one hour? It could have taken less then 10 minutes if you ask the teacher. Why was he handcuffed later? The police clearly wanted to make a statement or show.
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