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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 6th, 2023

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  • Well, there’s that, and also

    • Having to work really long hours to try to make ends meet
    • Being underpaid
    • No or minimal time off work (vacation and sick time both, and sometimes even medical leave doesn’t protect you all that much)
    • Poor worker’s rights in general
    • Crushing cost of housing
    • Crushing cost of education
    • Food and everything else you need to live is getting more expensive all the time, and the quality often goes down
    • Poor quality of medical care (on top of the exorbitant cost)
    • Not being able to spend much time with friends and family because they’re all drowning in work or otherwise struggling
    • Thinking about the number of friends and family who have killed themselves, come close, or are likely to try




  • I’ve been able to hear that too, for as long as I can remember. I don’t think that’s necessarily anything unusual when you’re the type of person who can hear earthworms cough. It sounds different at different times, like if I’m stressed or dehydrated.

    There’s really a lot you can hear if it’s quiet and you pay attention. Eyes opening and closing, eyeballs moving, joints moving (neck and spine sounds different than knees and elbows), muscles contracting (different ones sound different).



  • He said, “Sag mal, wie lange wollt ihr bei dem Scheiß bleiben?” He said the problem was that Trump was rambling (this part of the speech was unscripted). Article is in German. Here’s a partial translation by DeepL, tweaked by me:

    His interjection should not be interpreted as a political statement. “No, that would be completely wrong. The political content is not the problem,“ says Deja, adding: ”I interpret all the time for people whose political statements I don’t agree with. The problem with Trump was that he suddenly started associating freely or saying the same thing three times in a row. The difficulty when interpreting is following these confusing leaps of thought.” He explains: “If a speaker has organized thoughts, then as soon as the sentence has started, you can roughly guess what will come next. You can keep surfing that wave. But that’s impossible with Trump.”

    I believe it, because simultaneous interpreting is really hard, intense work. You have to listen, remember it word for word, understand it, and give an accurate, natural sounding translation pretty much instantly. You have to try to convey the tone, understand cultural differences, and figure out how to say things that just don’t translate well. It’s so much work that interpreters often work in teams so they can relieve each other every 30 minutes or so.


  • Officers or prosecutors withheld the existence of multiple witnesses and police reports, including one of an attempted armed robbery at a gas station across the street from the furniture store within hours of the murders. The original judge also behaved inappropriately, the lawyers say, getting a doctor to prescribe Valium to a holdout juror, who only then voted to convict.

    Withholding evidence is not that uncommon, unfortunately, but it looks like it was especially bad in this case. And giving Valium to a juror is an egregious overreach. The full details of what happened are even worse than it sounds at first glance.

    She was under a lot of pressure because she wanted to talk about the evidence and the other jurors didn’t. They yelled at her and heckled her, basically, until she fainted. The judge finds out and says it’s no problem. Defense lawyer asks for a mistrial, gets turned down. Juror says she doesn’t need a doctor. Then the judge makes a phone call, in secret, and gets her doctor to give her Valium. Enough that the other jurors thought she was “floating.”

    The worst part is, the Florida supreme court saw no problem with that. They said it wasn’t judicial misconduct, it was just the judge being concerned and looking out for her.



  • Different ways, depending on how I feel.

    • Music. Metal, mostly. Something I can turn up and get into.
    • Sing along or scream. Ideally in the car on the freeway, so I don’t have to worry about scaring the neighbors.
    • Something active or active-ish. Cooking something complicated. Practicing the piano/keyboard. Bike ride. Gym, so you can punch stuff. Or a long walk with something to listen to.
    • Vent to a friend.
    • Write it out and delete it.
    • Stew in it for longer than I should.


  • I understand that, but at some point they will hit a number where people in the area can’t afford the 1st month (or more) down or even monthly payments.

    I lived in a place where that happened. There were very obvious changes as the rent kept going up. (I stayed because everywhere else was going up just as much.)

    • Long-term tenants moved out.
    • A lot more one bedrooms had roommates.
    • People had less furniture. Sometimes just a mattress on the floor and a plastic chair.
    • A lot more three-day notices and eviction notices on people’s doors.
    • Some apartments turned into Airbnbs.
    • One apartment turned, very not surreptitiously, into a “massage” place.
    • More and more units stayed empty for months.

    None of that stopped the rent from going up. If anything, it went up faster.



  • People began to rejoice in their ability to speak freely. Furious debates over the country’s future ensued. In cafes, over cups of coffee and cigarettes, furious arguments were taking place about the direction the rebel-led government would take, voices raised as people tested the new limits of their freedoms.

    Still, it was not easy to shake off the idea that the regime was watching. During an interview with a public-sector employee who preferred to remain anonymous, the employee paused as they were asked about their opinion about the new government. They excused themselves and went to the next room, where they threw up.

    Returning to the interview with red-rimmed eyes, the employee apologised.

    “You ask me if I’m afraid? Of course, I am afraid. I am 53 years old. And in 53 years, this is the first time that I am speaking freely,” they said.





  • And wealthy or well-connected. If you’re poor, you don’t necessarily have much of a chance.

    The link is a long read, but interesting. The story of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in Texas in 2004 for supposedly setting a fire that killed his three kids.

    In December, 2004, questions about the scientific evidence in the Willingham case began to surface. Maurice Possley and Steve Mills, of the Chicago Tribune, had published an investigative series on flaws in forensic science; upon learning of Hurst’s report, Possley and Mills asked three fire experts, including John Lentini, to examine the original investigation. The experts concurred with Hurst’s report. Nearly two years later, the Innocence Project commissioned Lentini and three other top fire investigators to conduct an independent review of the arson evidence in the Willingham case. The panel concluded that “each and every one” of the indicators of arson had been “scientifically proven to be invalid.”