An academic study on “pseudo-profound bullshit” finds that the people most likely to believe pseudo-profound bullshit are suckers—who are also dumb.

The study, published last month in the journal Judgment and Decision Making, analyzes the traits of people who are prone to believe strongly in a particular variety of bullshit: statements that sound superficially profound, but that actually mean jack shit, on closer examination. These are, according to the study, “statements consisting of buzzwords randomly organized into statements with syntactic structure but no discernible meaning (e.g., ‘Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena’).” The sort of captions that your friend who lived in New Zealand for a while puts on Instagram.

The study hypothesizes that some people may have “a potential inability to detect bullshit, which may cause one to confuse vagueness for profundity.” Indeed, you in fact know some of these people—your Facebook friends. We’ll skip all of the scientific mumbo-jumbo and just give you the raw scientific facts: “Those more receptive to bullshit are less reflective, lower in cognitive ability (i.e., verbal and fluid intelligence, numeracy), are more prone to ontological confusions and conspiratorial ideation, are more likely to hold religious and paranormal beliefs, and are more likely to endorse complementary and alternative medicine.”

Sound like anyone you know? No? Okay, sure. Timelessness is the face of the soul.

[Full study, via IFL Science. Photo: Flickr]

On Thursday, New York police arrested 49-year-old Mark Davis and found in his home a number of worrying items—the illegal possession of which, individually and collectively, carry significant jail time.

Among those items:

• A knife
• A .380-caliber pistol
• A loaded assault rifle
  
• Other weapon
• A ballistic body armor vest
• Three high-capacity magazines with 8,300 rounds
• A fake US Marshals shield
• A fake US Marshals ID card
• A US Marshals parking placard
• Flashing lights in his car
• A bulletproof vest labeled “POLICE Federal Agent”

“At this time we don’t see any immediate threat to the public,” Nassau County police Det. Lt. Richard LeBrun told reporters Friday.

Now that he’s in custody, investigators have a real mystery on their hands: What was this guy going to do with all this stuff?

(H/T The New York Daily New)

Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

Yesterday, the Los Angeles County DA’s office announced that it would not be pressing charges against highway patrol officer officer Daniel Andrew, who was filmed punching 51-year-old Marlene Pinnock in July 2014. It may go without saying but needs to be noted regardless: Pinnock is black.

Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey’s statement, via the Los Angeles Times, reads:

When looking at all of the evidence, and especially the medical reports and eyewitness accounts, it becomes exceedingly clear that the officer, who was alone and struggling with Ms. Pinnock precariously close to evening freeway traffic, acted within the law. In our analysis, his use of force was legal and necessary to protect not only his own life but also that of Ms. Pinnock.

Reports the Times:

Lacey also noted that the officer also had a duty to protect freeway commuters from a potentially dangerous situation had Pinnock gotten away from him and walked onto the freeway. Prosecutors relied on medical records, eyewitness accounts, recordings of 911 calls and multiple patrol car dash camera videos of the incident as part of the investigation.

Several eyewitnesses were interviewed, including three who said they saw Pinnock strike the officer and four who said they thought Andrew was trying to save Pinnock from wandering into freeway traffic and being killed or injured.

The video shows Pinnock walking away from Andrew, who follows her, throws her to the ground, straddles her, and punches her repeatedly. Pinnock, who has bipolar disorder, suffered traumatic head injury according to her lawyer, and was awarded a $1.5 million settlement as a result of the beating in September 2014. Andrew “elected to resign,” according to the California Highway Patrol’s statement. His last day was Tuesday. According to the district attorney’s report, Pinnock did not suffer abrasions, lacerations, or internal bleeding, and a CT scan found no evidence of facial swelling or fracture.

The Times adds:

In October, Pinnock was arrested again about 2:30 a.m. on the same stretch of 10 Freeway for walking in traffic lanes. Her attorney said after Pinnock’s arrest that her family was seeking to arrange long-term care for her.

Kristin Cavallari, a writer, has inhabited many places throughout her lifetime. The driver’s seat of a Range Rover, an infinity pool, at least one college classroom—all kinds of places. But where is she right now?

Perhaps the spa.

This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]

Why isn’t ISIS massacring people in the United States every day? Even after the FBI declared the San Bernardino massacre an “act of terrorism” today, the 14 bodies added to the jihadist column on the murder scoreboard still left Islamic radicals trailing right-wing extremists, 48 to 45.

And even that comparison overstates the role of jihadi violence in American life, excluding as it does all the performative slaughter committed by teenagers, or by people claiming non-right-wing grievances, or by people too psychotic to fit political categorization, or by sexually frustrated misogynists. It is very easy to get guns in this country and to use them to kill large numbers of people in public places. People who are otherwise barely able to function in society have been able to do it.

“Go to New York, walk around Rockefeller Center,” New Jersey governor and not-yet-withdrawn presidential candidate Chris Christie told Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic. “Five guys with AK-47s could bring that city to its knees in 15 minutes. 15 minutes!”

Christie was arguing that the United States is “not yet” as vulnerable as Europe, which seems untrue. Or if it is true, the difference is in the five guys; it seems not to be as easy to get a team of experienced militant fighters into New York as Paris. But the AK-47s, we have covered. You can buy one from one of the gun stores where the alleged San Bernardino killers reportedly did their shopping, if you want.

Either way, ISIS has not yet demonstrated operational capabilities in this country beyond the capabilities available to the ordinary American. The San Bernardino killing was, by our standards, an ordinary one—toward the high end, body-count-wise, but otherwise unspectacular. It was not a coordinated assault like Paris or Mumbai. Except for the Facebook message in which one of the alleged killers pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, it mostly played out as a workplace shooting. It belonged to a tradition dating back to the days when Osama bin Laden was still busy fighting the Soviets on our behalf.

And in that light, what difference does the ISIS connection make? If Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik professed a political motive for their killing spree, so did Jerad and Amanda Miller last year in Las Vegas, yelling about the revolution as they left a Gadsden flag on the bodies of the police officers they’d murdered. If Farook and Malik had a cache of undetonated homemade bombs, so did lots of high school students.

Before the FBI had come up with the international terrorism angle, the stories about San Bernardino could have been patched together from prior stories. Did Farook come from “an unstable, broken home amid allegations of marital abuse”? No, that was Dylann Storm Roof, the accused Charleston shooter (from the URL: “suspects-life-troubled-road-radicalization”). Farook’s father

was an alcoholic and could be violent, capable of lashing out at his wife and children, according to statements his mother, Rafia Farook, made in a series of divorce proceedings beginning in 2006. The father, also named Syed Farook, called his wife names, screamed at his children, hurled home appliances and, at the worst moments, grew so combative that his children had to step between him and his wife, she asserted.

What would we learn from the San Bernardino suspects picking up the ISIS flag that we didn’t learn from the Las Vegas killers waving the Gadsden flag, or from Roof wearing the Rhodesian flag on his jacket? They all inhabited the same nation.

Illustration by Jim Cooke. Contact the author at scocca@gawker.com.

The United States government is willing to try some weird stuff to combat ISIS’s online influence—and that includes operating an insult-slinging account on a social network for insecure teens fishing for compliments.

A panel of branding experts just conducted a review that doubted the State Department’s online anti-ISIS campaign tactics. A US official told the Washington Post that the panel “had serious questions about whether the U.S. government should be involved in overt messaging at all.” If the State Department’s Ask.fm account counts for anything, the panel is obviously correct.

In 2013, the State Department started an English-language anti-ISIS social media campaign and made it unnecessarily complicated right off the bat by giving it an awkward mouthful of a name: “Think Again Turn Away.”

To fight ISIS’s fancy memes, Think Again Turn Away opened accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and even Ask.fm, the question-and-answer site briefly popular with emotional teens a few years ago. Think Again Turn Away’s accounts are, to put it lightly, trash fires in a medical waste dump on Planet You’re Bad At Your Job, and Ask.fm is one of the worst.

Think Again Turn Away is prolific on Twitter, but the last Ask.fm question came in 11 months ago. As the Q&A site faded in its general popularity, it looks like interest in conversing with a mouthy government anti-propaganda account did, too. That’s probably a good thing, because the State Department’s interactions on Ask.fm were, uh, not productive.

Here are some high (low?) lights:

“You can’t put a price on destroying terrorism...but here’s our estimate.”

That’s not a real flavor, but it’s a better response than the one below, where the State Department encourages people to yell at ISIS online.

But the most bizarre answers were responses to trolling pro-ISIS questions. Instead of ignoring them, the State Department got real surly, real quick:

While it’s—I don’t know, not necessarily amusing, but at least sort of humanizing to see State Department employees lashing out so passionately against perceived enemies, it’s an unambiguously stupid campaign.

Scrolling through the questions and answers is an exercise in rapidly losing confidence in the governments’ ability to wage a propaganda war. The premise that you can combat terrorism by giving pissy responses to anonymous questions is bizarre. Actual ISIS members have tweeted at Think Again Turn Away, so it’s not that they won’t make contact. Tossing insults and shitty memes at them is more likely to fuel their anger than make them have an epiphany about the Islamic State’s morality.

Screenshots via Ask.fm

After announcing from the hilltops that it will not, under any circumstances, no-way-buster, allow any more Syrian refugees to enter its state borders, a closer read of the law found that Texas actually can’t legally do that.

According to The Associated Press, the state withdrew a request asking for the temporary ban on the resettlement of refugees from Syria on Friday, putting an end to a lawsuit brought over the issue.

Texas was one of 29 other states whose governors have said that they will try to block refugees from entering—a move which the Obama administration has repeatedly said is not within their authority. Championed by Gov. Greg Abbott, Texas had even ordered non-profit organizations that work with refugees to stop helping those from Syria.

Texas, true to form, has said it won’t back down, though. The state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, said in a statement:

“Our state will continue legal proceedings to ensure we get the information necessary to adequately protect the safety of Texas residents.”

Despite all the hubbub, the actual number of Syrian refugees resettling in Texas is incredibly low—and most are children. Next week, 21 Syrian refugees, most 13 years old or younger, are expected to resettle in Dallas and Houston.

[Image via Getty]

As the number of mass shootings in 2015 continues to climb and, by some counts even outpaces the number of days so far in the year, The New York Times issued a desperate plea for an end to the violence brought on by too-lax gun control laws in the U.S.

On Saturday, the Times’ editorial board published a compelling front-page op-ed titled, “End the Gun Epidemic in America”—the first time the paper has done so since 1920. The piece argues that in the wakes of the tragedies, weapons like modified combat rifles (the ones used by the shooters in San Bernardino last week) should be outlawed for civilian ownership. It also points a finger directly at politicians who support lax gun control:

Worse, politicians abet would-be killers by creating gun markets for them, and voters allow those politicians to keep their jobs. It is past time to stop talking about halting the spread of firearms, and instead to reduce their number drastically — eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition.

The timing, in the lead-up to a major election, is right to pressure political action on gun control, write the editors. Read the entire piece here.

[Image via Getty]

Here are the best of today’s deals. Get every great deal every day on Kinja Deals, follow us on Facebook and Twitter to never miss a deal, join us on Kinja Gear to read about great products, and on Kinja Co-Op to help us find the best.

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If the power at your house can be a little spotty, this $20 APC backup UPS is designed specifically to keep your modem and router running on battery power, so you’ll never lose touch with the world. Today’s deal matches a short-lived Black Friday sale, which at the time was actually a full $20 less than its previous lowest price. [APC Back-UPS Connect, $20]

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Back again from Cyber Monday: Dell is once again offering a rare deal on a year of Dropbox Pro. In addition to a $20 discount, you’ll get a bonus $25 Dell promo gift card (shows up in the cart). [1 Year Dropbox Pro + $25 Dell Gift Card, $80]

As always with these Dell gift card deals, make sure you see the gift card in your cart before checking out, and remember that it’s only valid for 90 days.

If you didn’t pull the trigger on a new TV last weekend, this 55” Samsung 4K Smart TV is actually marked down to a full $100 less than its Black Friday price. [Samsung - 55” Class 4K Smart TV, $700]

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You can also opt for a 48” model for $500. [Samsung 48-Inch LED 2160p Smart 4K Ultra HDTV, $500]

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We’ve seen plenty of USB charging hubs that included one Quick Charge 2.0 port, but this one boasts five. [Tronsmart Titan 10A/90W 5 Ports Quick Charge 2.0 Desktop USB Charger Charging Station, $25 with code 5PORTCHA]

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Want to try out Prime Pantry, but can’t bring yourself to pay the $6/box shipping fee? Just add four qualifying items to your package, and use code PANTRYDEC for free shipping. [Purchase four qualifying Prime Pantry items, get free shipping with code PANTRYDEC]

One of our best selling pieces of grooming gear is down to an all-time low price. Great stocking stuffer! [Panasonic ER-GN30-K Nose Ear Hair Trimmer, $9]

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As we move into Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, here’s the best deal ever on the collectible Phase 1 Blu-ray box set. [Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One - Avengers Assembled, $99]

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Amazon’s also discounting a bunch of Marvel-inspired clothing, today only. [Marvel apparel on sale]

If you missed out on Black Friday’s Brother monchrome laser printer deals, you can pick up a barebones (but still excellent) 2300D for $40 today from Amazon.

This model doesn’t have a scanner or built-in networking, but it can still spit out 27 pages per minute, and print in duplex. Plus, unlike similarly-priced inkjet alternatives, replacement toner cartridges are affordable, and they won’t dry out if you don’t use them for a few weeks. [Brother HL-L2300D Monochrome Laser Printer, $40]

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GoPro’s lilliputian Hero4 Session got an official $100 price drop (from $400) just a few months after launch, and now you can save another $100, plus take home a head strap mount and a 32GB microSD Card. [GoPro HERO4 Session Starter Kit, $200]

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This isn’t the first time Amazon’s had a sale like this, but if your car’s wiper blades are a little worn down, you can replace them both for just $22 today.

All you have to do is add any two Valeo frameless wiper blades (shipped and sold by Amazon) to your cart, and their total price will automatically drop to $22 at checkout. If you can’t remember what sizes your car requires, Amazon has a built-in tool at the top of the page to filter the options. [Buy Any Two Valeo Wiper Blades For $22]

Note: The promotion page says this deal ended on November 30, but it still seems to be working fine.

More Deals

Tech

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• Photive HYDRA Waterproof Wireless Bluetooth Speaker ($38) | Amazon
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• Dropbox Pro 1 Year Subscription + $25 Dell Gift Card ($80) | Dell
• Fire HD 6 Kids Edition ($120) | Amazon | $30 off
• Kindle Fire HD 7” ($100) | Amazon | $55 off
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Commerce Content is independent of Editorial and Advertising, and if you buy something through our posts, we may get a small share of the sale. Click here to learn more. We want your feedback.Send deal submissions to Deals@Gawker and all other inquiries to Shane@Gawker

Life is art, except when it’s not art.

Attendees at Art Basel Miami Beach this week who assumed they were looking at an art installation were actually looking at the scene of a brutal stabbing.

According to The Miami Herald, one female attendee attacked another woman, also an attendee, with an X-Acto knife Friday night, stabbing her in the arms and neck.

“The injuries are non life-threatening,” said Miami Beach police spokeswoman Det. Kathleen Prieto.

Worst of all, some of the attendees thought the fight was part of a performance. From the Miami Herald:

Both women were patrons of the art show, not exhibitors. Some patrons thought the stabbing was a performance art presentation. Others believed the police tape cordoning off an area of the convention center was part of an art installation.

One artist, Naomi Fisher, described the confusion:

“A guy walked up to me and said, ‘I thought I saw a performance, and I thought it was fake blood, but it was real blood.’”

[Image via WPLG]

Coach gotta chill out, man. The concussion problem in football is bad enough without you making it worse on yourself.

Anyway, this psychotic dickbag is famous enough to have a Wikipedia page with a lengthy Controversy section, so go check that out. (His team won.)

[WAGA]

h/t to Gary

Donald Trump, at once the most verbose and inarticulate candidate the country has ever seen, is just not getting the chance to spew his bumbling inaccuracies these days.

During a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Friday night, Trump’s speech was continually interrupted by groups of protesters, by some guesses as many as ten separate times. The protesters all appeared to be associated with Black Lives Matter, and were positioned randomly throughout the arena.

Trump continually points at the protesters and then at another spot, perhaps signaling to security, a tight-lipped smirk plastered on his face. At one point, he responded to a protester with a simple, uncomfortable “hello.”

Some reports say that there were five separate incidents, with others going as high as 10. Each time, Trump supporters moved quickly to remove them from the arena or “covering them in coats,” according to CNN’s Noah Gray.

Protesters, many associated with Black Lives Matter, are now showing up at lots of Trump rallies, despite his insistence that he has a “great relationship with the blacks.” Maybe this is why.

[Image via YouTube]

Hostages are being held inside the Eagle Nation Cycles motorcycle repair shop in Neenah, Wis., after a man walked inside and fired off his weapon, reports WISN. Police have responded to the gunman and have requested assistance from the Appleton Police Department’s SWAT team.

A Facebook post by the Neenah Police Department describes the situation as a “high risk incident,” and says that reports from the scene say that at least one possible shot has been fired.

Police are advising nearby residents to stay away from windows in case the situation escalates outside the shop.

In addition to telling area residents to seek shelter, the Neenah Police Department tweeted that they have evacuated a number of homes and businesses nearby.

Two people have apparently been moved from the scene for hospital treatment, according to news reports.

UPDATE [12:58 p.m.]: WHBY journalist Phil Cianciola reports that several other shots have been fired in the building, per the Mayor Dean Kaufert’s report. Kaufert was near the scene was briefed on the situation shortly after the hostage situation began.

UPDATE [1:18 p.m.]: Several journalists on the scene report that police are detaining the suspect, according to RT. Reports suggest that the man walked out of the shop with no weapon after negotiating with police.

UPDATE [1:34 p.m.]: Mayor Kaufert spoke with the press right before reports started coming in of police making contact with the suspect.

Police have surrounded the motorcycle shop. According to local news station Fox 11, the mayor reported that over 30 shots had been fired and there are more firearms in the building. Kaufert reported that people are being held in the basement of the Eagle Nation Cycles building. (Fox 6 has a video of the full interview with the mayor here.)

Fox 11 also reports that police are asking to extend their perimeter around the cycle shop.

UPDATE [1:58 p.m.]: WLUK’s Courtney Ryan posted these photos of the suspect walking out of the building and being taken into custody:

UPDATE [2:20 p.m.]: Two people are now in custody, according to the latest reports from Fox 11.

WBAY reports that federal agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms will assist Neenah Police with tracing the firearm used and other aspects of the investigation.

Police confirmed in a press conference after the suspects were in custody that a police officer and a citizen have been taken to the hospital with injuries, reports Fox 6. Police also told Fox 6 that they are in the process of going through “final clearing operations” to ensure the site is safe.

More on this situation as it develops.

Photo credit Phil Cianciola video screencap

Contact the author at stef.schrader@jalopnik.com.

“20 Drop Dead Gorgeous Wives of NFL Players.” Would you believe that Kristin Cavallari is one of them?

Well, she is—check back tomorrow to see where she placed among her peers. Or click the link now, if you want to cheat.

This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]

A man who reportedly tried to rob a Bank of America watch shot and killed by police on Saturday just blocks away from Art Basel, the annual art world gathering in the city.

The man reportedly told a bank teller at 10:30 a.m. Saturday morning that he had a bomb, and fled to a nearby barber shop when police arrived at the scene. The Miami Herald reports:

Witnesses said he could be seen causing a commotion inside the shop. Police said he refused to leave the shop.

He emerged with a straight edge razor in his hand.

The incident that followed, in which police officers confront and ultimately shoot the man as he stands before them, was caught on video by a bystander. A warning—the video contains graphic images.

A statement issued by the Miami Beach police department reads:

The subject emerged with a straight edge razor in his hand. Shots were fired and the subject is deceased. Pursuant to departmental policy, Miami-Dade County Police Department will be investigating the shooting. The FBI and Miami Beach Police Department will be investigating the bank robbery.

On Friday evening, Art Basel played host to another violent incident: one female attendee reportedly stabbed another with an X-Acto knife. Shocked onlookers said that they thought the incident was part of a performance piece.

Conservative blogger, unrepentant sexist, Twinkie opponent and fat man who hates fat lesbians Erick Erickson has a strong opinion about The New York Times’ front-page editorial calling for tighter gun laws in the wake of a spate of mass shootings in the U.S.

Erickson, who is editor-in-chief of the conservative website RedState.com, tweeted out his unintentionally hilarious response to the editorial today:

So now we know: not only has Erickson not learned to use his Big Boy words when he doesn’t like something—he’s also a terrible shot.

In our awe at the cultural savvy of overinflated piss-blimp Donald Trump at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s candidate forum on Thursday, we somehow missed this other beautiful moment, starring Gob Bush, living monogram/“caged tiger”/breeder puppy with indigestion who has been asked to do too many tricks.

Here: watch a candidate currently polling at around 3 percent promise he will take the GOP nomination to Hillary Clinton (a candidate currently polling at 58 percent) and “whup her.” Then watch those 21 grams drift quietly out his beleaguered earholes as he realizes what he’s done.

Updated: Here’s the full footage in not great quality, where you can hear that the “boo level” in the above Vine is edited (by the comedic video editor @ToddDracula, as shown on the watermark).

Image via screengrab/Vine

Contact the author at jia@jezebel.com.

Once again, Chipotle is just plain-out refusing to take down its signature diarrhea-inducing burrito—a menu item that is as unpleasant as it is unpopular.

More specifically, the Mexican fast food company has not eradicated a pathogenic strain of E. coli that has been making its customers sick for months. On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control reported that the outbreak has spread from six states to nine in all. According to Reuters, a total of 52 people have fallen ill, with 47 reporting that they ate at Chipotle immediately before.

Infected states include Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania, California, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Oregon and Washington. The source of the outbreak—meaning which product in particular contains the strain of E. coli—has not yet been identified.

Infections are caused by oral contact to fecal matter, and symptoms include abdominal cramping, diarrhea, vomiting, fever and, in rare cases, can lead to death.

Chipotle quickly issued a statement Friday in response to the outbreak, saying the company “has taken aggressive actions to implement indus Throughout its supply chain.”

Meanwhile, the company’s shares dropped nearly 8 percent to $518 this week because, as it turns out, no one wants to eat an E. coli-laced burrito.

[Image via Getty]

A 73-year-old man was pulled over for a routine traffic offense in Seattle the other day: driving without his lights on. Things went considerably worse than they should have when the man reportedly tried to snort a little cocaine right in front of the officer.

Seattle Police Officer Nic Abts-Olsen was prepared to the elderly man go with a warning because of his clean driving record, however, that’s when he saw the man scoop into a glass vial of cocaine. Startled when the officer came back to his window, the man fumbled the vial and spilled its snow-white contents in his car.

Making matters worse is the fact that the man tried to brush it off like a second grader who’d just been caught stealing extra cookies by their mother.

“What’s in your left hand?” asked Abts-Olsen.

“Nothing,” the man replied

“Show me what’s in your left hand,” the officer demanded.

The driver tried to claim he had vitamin pills, but then said “I know!” after the officer (correctly) pointed out that white powder looks nothing like a vitamin pill.

Instead of getting let off with a warning, the man was arrested and booked into the King County Jail for possession of narcotics.

[H/T Sean Crawford!]

Screenshot via SPD Blotter YouTube

Contact the author at stef.schrader@jalopnik.com.

In the wake of the horrific shootings that left 14 dead in San Bernardino last week, new details have emerged about the 29-year-old female shooter, Tashfeen Malik.

A piece published in The LA Times on Sunday paints a portrait of Malik as a previously “modern” girl who turned to radical and eventually extremist Islam during college.

Malik was born in Pakistan, lived in Saudi Arabia and moved to the U.S. after meeting her husband, Chicago-born Syed Rizwan Farook, online. Most of the sources the Times interviewed couldn’t say what Malik looked like, because she normally wore a head scarf to cover her face. A family member from her hometown said that she became more religious after college, attending religious groups in the area. They began to worry when she began speaking in Arabic, which her family members couldn’t understand (they speak Urdu and a dialect of Punjabi known as Saraiki):

“She used to talk to somebody in Arabic at night on the Internet. None of our family members in Pakistan know Arabic, so we do not know what she used to discuss.”

Said another family member:

“She was so modern. I do not know what had happened to her. She brought a bad name to our family.”

Another piece published in The Washington Post on Sunday gives a similar timeline of Malik’s turn toward religious conservatism. College friends say that around 2009, Malik began paying more attention to Islamic studies than to her studies in pharmacology.

During her final year at the university, Malik became so rigid in her conservative Islamic religious beliefs that she refused a staple of college life: getting photographed. When Malik graduated from pharmacy school, she tried to remove all of her pictures from university databases. She collected all of her university identification and library cards and destroyed them.

Malik and Farook’s actions suggest that the attack was inspired by other terrorist attacks in the U.S., including the attack on the Boston Marathon finish line in 2013. On Wednesday, just before storming into a holiday party with her husband and an assault rifle, Malik posted on her Facebook page, swearing allegiance to the Islamic State.

Read the entire LA Times profile here.

[Image via AP]