12/15/25

Good morning! It’s Monday, December 15th.

National Cupcake Day

Honestly, a sweet treat of any kind would be good, I think.

We all deserve something.

And now, the news.

Brown University Shooting

-via AP News, Boston News 25, and CNN

We start how we start here in America – with two dead and nine other injured after someone opened fire during final exams at Brown University. This happened on Saturday afternoon, and as I record this on Sunday, there is a person of interest in custody, a 24-year-old from Wisconsin, but no motive and few details.

The Providence police chief has said that no one has been charged, although they are not searching for anyone else.

The suspect is 24-year-old Benjamin Erickson, who served as an infantry soldier in the Army, where he passed sniper training. Authorities say he was not currently enrolled at Brown, however others have said that he transferred to Brown and was talking classes.

So obviously not everyone has all of the details. The biggest question being, of course, why. Which is something we always ask. Something we always want to know. Because we want to understand, as if somehow we could ever understand enough to prevent this from ever happening again.

Because, you know, that’s just the only possible way to prevent something like this from happening. Certainly, there’s no, you know, legislation that could ever be passed to prevent this from happening over and over and over again.

Because this is America, we’re already getting stories like this – a junior at Brown, who had to go into lockdown on Saturday, had, just a few years ago, survived being shot in the abdomen during 2019’s Saugus High shooting.

Obviously, there are a lot of questions still being asked, but as things stand right now, of those who were hospitalized, one person is in critical condition, seven are in stable condition, and one person with less severe injuries was discharged.

The suspect, by the way, was found in part because the landlord of a local tea shop in Providence stayed up all night with his family, reviewing footage alongside the FBI, to spot Erickson walking through the neighborhood.

That landlord is an immigrant from Belarus, and the owner of the tea shop is an immigrant from China. Just… seemed like something important to note.

This is the 349th day of the year and the 391st mass shooting of the year.

Shooting in Australia

-via BBC, The Guardian, and NPR

And in Australia’s Bondi Beach, at least 15 people have been killed, with another 42 injured, after a father-son team shot at a crowd gathered for Chanukah by the Sea, an annual event celebrating the beginning of Hanukkah.

One of the shooters, the 50-year-old father, was shot and killed by police. The second shooter is in critical condition.

Two basic, though active, IEDs were found at the scene as well.

Because Australia has such strict gun laws, implemented after a mass shooting that saw the death of 25 people, events like this are extremely rare. Before today, the last mass shooting in the country was in 2022.

However, what the country lacks in mass shootings, it turns out, it makes up for in antisemitism.

Since the October 7th 2023 Hamas attack in Israel, there have been a 400% increase in the country that has about 28 million people, 117,000 of which are Jewish.

Last year, in May of 2024, antisemitic graffiti was found at one of the largest and oldest Jewish schools in Melbourne’s east. Months later, a Jewish-owned bakery was defaced just days before a brewery near the beach where the shooting took place was set on fire. And then just three days later, a kosher deli was set on fire.

November through February saw multiple cars set on fire, a synagogue set on fire, multiple synagogues vandalized, a childcare center vandalized, a terror threat that turned out to be fake, and even a video on TikTok showing nurses who said they wouldn’t treat, or would even kill, Jewish patients if they presented for care.

Things seemed to have calmed down for a big, before July saw about 20 worshippers at a Shabbat dinner being forced to evacuate after a man tried to light a building on fire while everyone was inside.

If you’re catching the theme, it’s graffiti, yet, but also… arson.

Arson. As a means of attacking Jewish people.

Israel’s Netanyahu is blaming Australia’s prime minister for doing nothing to stop the spread of antisemitism during the Israel-Hamas war, arguing that Australia’s recognition of a Palestinian state led to what happened on Sunday.

Which is just… an impossibly backwards way of viewing what’s happening.

Palestine deserves the right to exist. Palestinians in Gaza deserve the right to exist and survive. Benjamin Netanyahu’s time as Prime Minister makes that harder. His actions have made it nearly impossible. And yet, somehow, against all odds, they try every single day.

But their right to exist does not negate Jewish people’s right to exist.

28 million people in Australia.

.4% are Jewish.

400% increase in antisemitism.

And that’s it. That’s the news.

Because when two mass shootings, in two days, lead the news, I think we can decide that that’s the whole episode.

In Australia, the Australian Red Cross Lifeblood Australia website crashed earlier because so many people answered the call to donate blood.

We’re supposed to look for the helpers.

I’m proud of the helpers.

And of cupcakes. But more than cupcakes, because you too are layered and sweet… I’m proud of you.