...UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a midtown Manhattan sidewalk in broad daylight.

Do we know what actually happened? No, we don't. Who does? As with all major events, it's doubtful anyone who claims to actually does either. However, even those who say "it's all theater" severely underestimate the power of theater — a point we will continue to repeat because it's extremely important to comprehend. The magician on stage performing an amazing trick may be just that, just a magician. The audience even goes to the show aware of this fact. But their reactions are real.

It doesn't matter what spin the media attempts to apply to it after the fact. That public outrage — that squelchy Eldritch Abomination-esque thing writhing in the dark — is still right there, right under the surface, barely concealed.

I've been doing this a while, and I've never seen a reaction like that, not even after 9/11. Never.

Are there parallels in history? I'm sure. But as it goes in the modern moment, even historians have since been asking when is the last time anyone has witnessed the public react this way to the announcement that one man's life was given an untimely end? In my whole life I have never seen so many deeply visceral, personal reactions to a major event as this one.

How many people's lives did this one man's existence inadvertently touch?

That's before we even get into what he symbolically represented in the eyes of so many. That's before we even discuss the lawsuit his company was involved in accusing said company — the 8th largest by revenue in the entire world and the largest health insurer in the U.S. who by far denies the most health insurance claims — of utilizing a weaponized AI to deny people care.

"UnitedHealth uses AI model with 90% error rate to deny care, lawsuit alleges: For the largest health insurer in the US, AI's error rate is like a feature, not a bug," reads the Nov. 16, 2023 Ars Technica headline:

UnitedHealthcare, the largest health insurance company in the US, is allegedly using a deeply flawed AI algorithm to override doctors' judgments and wrongfully deny critical health coverage to elderly patients. This has resulted in patients being kicked out of rehabilitation programs and care facilities far too early, forcing them to drain their life savings to obtain needed care that should be covered under their government-funded Medicare Advantage Plan.

That's all according to a lawsuit filed this week in the US District Court…