Hey now, the west coast (especially the northern half) is very much one region which works together. The states are largely similar in terms of culture and politics and even sometimes work together on shared legislative goals.
It wouldn't be California leaving. It would be the whole west coast.
It wasn't as good as you remember as a kid. Back then, people would get denied insurance coverage for "prior conditions". This basically meant that once you developed some sort of health condition, if you ever wanted it to be covered by health insurance again, you needed to stick with your current plan and never, ever switch or have it changed by your employer.
I know this is a cliche, but I've never said it before: I wish I could upvote you more than once.
And it's not just CS classes. Most classes at the college and above level do this to you. You don't get a vacation. You get more work than usual, while also having a family expecting you to engage in prolonged social activities. And almost every class does this, particularly at the higher levels. So your workload is massive.
Yeah, my last con was PAX West some...6(?) years ago. Don't see myself attending another. I did get some really fantastic dice there, though. Jade. I love jade. And a nice art print. Still, I've just kind of had enough of them now that they're all so crowded and expensive.
I often am even more disabled in my dreams than I am in real life, as my dreams play to my fears of being entirely unable to walk (I have muscle weakness and fatigue, but I can still walk almost all of the time) or to wake up (also have narcolepsy and sometimes can't wake up).
Hopefully he wrote something down somewhere that gives us an idea to his motivation, but you're absolutely right. We may never know. From the little bit that has come out about the shooter, it sure seems likely to be a typical case of a young man feeling isolated and angry at society. I'm certainly not convinced that politics had anything to do with it at this point.
Castle Crashers