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Comment by politelemon | Hacker News Reader

Is the motive behind the felling still unknown?

Two people have been arrested, and there is a ton of speculation but those suspected deny having anything to do with it.

https://www.perthnow.com.au/travel/europe/sycamore-gap-was-t...

(that's an Australian site but I've yet to see a UK one with the same level of balance and detail)

To summarize, the 69-year-old man who was arrested (in addition to a 16-year-old boy) is a former lumberjack who had been in a legal battle to continue leasing land that had been in his family for many years, and lost the case just before the tree was cut down.

Do I detect some Aussie tongue in cheek here...

"Mr Renwick was quick to protest his innocence. “You’ve got the wrong feller,” he told reporters."

That is a UK source. Yes it's on Perth Now, but the byline clearly says it was by a Daily Mail journalist and here it is from the Mail on Sunday: https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-mail-on-sunday/20231015/2...

The motive behind many crimes is never found out. Turns out that even if the accused did have a logical motive for committing the crime, they tend to not reveal it to investigators to have a better chance at not going to prison.

Regardless of conviction, does having a motive for a crime typically increase the sentence? I would have thought it would be more likely to be the other way round.

Not a lawyer, but I would expect sentencing considers at minimum the details of the conviction. Maybe at that stage a lack of explanation under pressure presents as a lack of remorse.

But before conviction, not having a motive furthers certain defenses, and those possibilities can be useful in the context of plea bargaining.

I'm guessing: for the lulz, because wind-up merchants don't just live online.

Jargon question: what is “the lulz”?

Analogous to saying "for the laughs"

Although I'd say with something of a more malicious and/or mischievous connotation.

for the shadenfreude LOLs

Here is more than anyone should ever know about the lulz.

https://encyclopediadramatica.online/Lulz

Posting a link to encyclopedia dramatica without a NSFW tag...for the lulz.

(One of the first few images is of a ninja turtle raping a pokemon.)

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