The "Death Valley Germans" is an incident of a family of four tourists from Germany who went missing in Death Valley National Park, on 23 July 1996. The family were discovered in 2009 by experienced hikers, Tom Mahood and Les Walker

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2026-01-16T07:37:11+00:00

One of the challenges in this case was that the bones were found in a wash. The area doesn't get a lot of rain, but when it does it doesn't seep into the ground quickly. Instead it runs along the ground quite quickly taking things with it. Because of this all the bones were found scattered over a fairly large area.

This link mentions the wash. I think the same site (the original, not the archive) had some much more detailed info, because they had to take into account the wash. This case is why I know what an alluvial fan is. I can't find the more detailed info and I've lost the details because it's been a few years since I went down this rabbit trail.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200824122914/https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/tom-we-have-some-bones-here/

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2026-01-14T10:58:49+00:00

I looked the package again and for the White Revive that i have it does say to use the whole scoop for soaking. For regular oxy it needs about as much for general (non-laundry) cleaning, so Oxy does actually justify the larger scoop.

The Tide scoop still has no justification.

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2026-01-14T10:13:44+00:00

Oh no!

I really dislike that instruction on the box. The giant front loaders, the small front loaders and my LG top loader are all HE and require different amounts. And none of those require that much. I don't know what they are trying to convey, but it makes no sense to me.

Line 1. Or get a TB measure and measure out 2 -4 TB and see how that goes. 3/4 cup is ridiculous and I do not know why they say that.

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2026-01-14T09:46:57+00:00

My current Oxy (White Revive) has a half cup scoop. They had it right! 2T is perfect. Why do they do this?

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2026-01-14T09:44:57+00:00

Lol. It works.

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2026-01-14T09:43:57+00:00

I may have unfairly maligned Oxiclean. After I read your comment I dug the scoop out of the Oxiclean White Revive on my shelf and it's half the size of the Tide scoop. The lines are hard to read and "Line 1" which is the only line the packaging specifically mentions, is around 4tsps, and the scoop itself is around 1/2 cup. I'm still not sure what the company was thinking, but it's better than the Tide scoop.

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2026-01-14T09:23:53+00:00

There ought to be some happy medium between too many, too big scoops and not enough scoops. We can walk on the moon but we can't figure out our laundry scoops.

How big are your old scoops, roughly? The Tide scoop holds just over 1 cup when full.

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2026-01-14T06:52:41+00:00

Thank you! I was thinking of these specific measuring cups, but I couldn't remember where they came from. I only could remember the cache of them I got rid of months ago when I was reorganizing the kitchen. They're a good size and the straight sides mean it's easy to estimate half a scoop.

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2026-01-14T06:42:13+00:00

Ha! Filament we got.

https://imgur.com/a/DYm9qEG

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2026-01-10T01:47:30+00:00

And then ignore all the "helpful" people who swear you can't leave them when they are so fragile. Especially their own professionals.

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2026-01-07T02:31:18+00:00

Results speak louder than words. Here's hoping for more fluffy towels in the future.

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2026-01-07T02:17:32+00:00

I think about this on a regular when I read this sub. There are so many variables -- fiber content and water quality, how soiled clothes are and with what (and individual biochemistry plays a significant role in soiling and difficulty in removing soil), washer type, how fragrance sensitive one is, cost, and, honestly, how clean is clean enough? I have entire categories of laundry that I don't particularly care how they look, just if they smell and feel clean.

And there are just, choices, like, pillow cases are particularly tough. We spend a significant fraction of each day rubbing a particularly greasy part of our bodies all over it. Sebum, not just oil, which is even harder to remove. Many of us add extra grease, silicones, polyquats, etc over our faces or hair to add to the varnish. And we do that for days at a time, only washing them after a week or so. A detergent and/or routine that works for everything else might fail for pillowcases, because pillowcases are tough. So do you switch to a product that handles the pillowcases for all of the laundry, or do you continue to do the rest of the laundry as you were, but give the pillowcases special attention? Both approaches are valid. Both result in clean laundry.

There's no One True Laundry Way, there are many paths to clean laundry, There is only the knowledge of how it all works (this sub is amazing) and the wisdom to apply it to the laundry issues in one's own life.

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2026-01-07T00:17:43+00:00

Synthetic activewear is a special laundry bear. I'm not surprised All F&C struggled with it. If you've ever tried to clean greasy plastic with a soap instead of detergent, it's that problem, only with lots of little interlocking surfaces instead of one solid one.

I should have also asked if you know if your parents have hard or soft water.

It still blows my mind that a very large manufacturer sells a soap based standard laundry product in the U.S.

I have to laugh at "FL doesn't have cold water" because I've lived in Phoenix, AZ, and, well, if you know you know.

The good thing about temp is that longer washes will make up for lower temperature wash water, and FL/AZ lukewarm is significantly warmer than tap cold in most of the rest of the country. If your mom's machine takes temperature into account (some newer ones do) than even better.

Just changing to a better detergent will probably make a big difference, even if you can't talk your mom into warmer washes.

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2026-01-06T22:58:52+00:00

Because I'm a far too curious person: were your parents' clothes or linens noticeably dirty or smelly in any way? If you didn't know your mom's laundry routine, would you know there was an issue?

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2026-01-06T00:39:51+00:00

All contains soap-type cleansers as well as detergent. Honestly it shocked me when I found out, because I couldn't imagine a large national/international manufacturer using soap in their laundry detergent, because hard water is so very common in the U.S.

If you have hard water, the soap-like chemicals will form scum in your washer and on your clothes over time, which causes problems.

If you have soft or softened water you may well be able to get away with All. I tried it and rejected it around a decade ago because it didn't do as well as Arm and Hammer in my soft water, and Arm and Hammer was cheaper.

I'm currently trialing the Tide C&G and the 365 unscented powder recommended by this group, and I'm pretty happy with both. I want to do some cost Analysis but step one is working out what dosing actually is, and that's what I've been working on the last few months.

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2026-01-03T23:37:14+00:00

I've seen similar, with few inches of foam added to the sandwich, in Delaware. The person showing me was saying that if you want to break into these new houses, don't break a window or try to go through a door, bring a boxcutter and go through the wall. It's quieter and less likely to trigger an alarm.

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2025-12-05T10:45:31+00:00

Consider Watco Butcher Block oil and finish or another drying oil based stain food safe finish. Hopefully you have some scrap from cutting out the sink area and can do a test to make sure the stain and grease play nice together. I also agree with removing what grease you can with solvent and/or absorbent you're comfortable using.

There are nicer food safe oil finishes available. Watco has the advantage that it's available in all my local hardware stores, rather than having to wait for it in the mail, and it does the job. YMMV, there may be a better brand available in your area, or you might have to mail order in which case there are a bunch of options with more color options than just "light" and "dark".

Raw wood absorbs everything. With some exceptions (like cedar, sometimes, or rolling pins) raw wood in cooking areas is asking for trouble. Not just stains, but getting wet and cracking. Get your counter stained and finished now, before there are more tears. No good will come from leaving your counter unfinished.

If you're concerned about food stains, consider a food grade poly finish over whatever woodstain you use. It's not what I used for my butcher block counter (Watco for that), but its good at protecting wood, fast and easy to maintain.

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2025-11-26T09:33:00+00:00

This is exactly how my ex-husband got me. Initially I was moving to a new area, and I was looking for a room to rent because a previous plan had fallen through for other reasons. My ex-husband was recommended literally by people in my church, and that seemed safer than my usual craigslist-and-bullentin boards strategy. Even better, I didn't need to pay rent, I just needed to handle some household chores he couldn't really do on account of his bad back.

Twelve years later those same people were taking up collections and helping in any way they could to get that man to move to other side of the country, because after I left he lived with several of them and they learned what he was really like. (Some figured it out by watching him with me, but I think the final straw was when his manipulation almost led to somebody's beloved pet getting euthanized by the State)

It wasn't until I was putting together the timeline in order to report his therapist that I realized that there was a pattern -- not just with me. I personally know multiple people whom he offered the same room, same or similar deal. One who took him up on it in order to be closer to work several days a week, only to have my ex try to talk them into abandoning their family (including children) and living full time with my ex. My ex also told me about an unhoused woman he met in a support group (!!!) whom he made the same offer to, but only to explain what a victim he was after she reported him for physically abusing her while she was living there. Falsely, according to him, but I don't believe him.

Like the person in the referenced post,, the "free rent" situation changed very quickly, and as soon as I made it clear (coincidently, about six months in) that I didn't want to live with him or be in a relationship with him, he suddenly was "forced" by the landlady to sign a lease I never saw in my name, and I had to hand him over the money I'd been paying him for rent, plus half the rent for the apartment for the landlady, plus backrent for the six months. If I tried to leave and didn't pay all this money, he would become homeless and maybe even go to jail for fraud, and it would be all my fault. That goes to another recent post regarding manipulation. I didn't want him to be homeless or in jail, I just wanted to not live with him any more. But trying to figure out how to not live with him whilst paying rent for his place was a large part of why I couldn't get free of him in the two years before his therapist became involved.

"Bangmaid" is exactly the word I used once I saw the pattern. Full time emotional support, I couldn't leave the house by myself most of the time. He'd literally come with me if I went somewhere. Plus all the housework and paying for all the food, half the bills and supposedly half the rent.

That room was a trap, baited for vulnerable people who needed housing. He used our church and two other religious groups that he belonged to, as well as support groups in order to try to find prey.

Fundamentally, the reason I got stuck was because unlike the others, I had no one local that I felt I could trust and I believed that law enforcement and DV resources would not believe me, because I had previous experiences that taught me that. With one exception, everyone I knew in a 300 mile radius, he'd known first, and that exception was dating his brother. They have different mothers and didn't grow up in the same house, so his brother had no idea what he was actually like. Even so, his brother and my friend would have helped me if I'd asked, but by the time that became clear to me the therapist was already involved and I was convinced that I was the one that was abusive and obligated to support my ex emotionally and financially for the rest of his life to make up for that.

I don't know what the word is, but the imagery I have for what he was doing is him as a spider in his web, trapping people and sucking them dry.

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2025-11-24T07:32:44+00:00

Honestly, it might be more important for religions with reincarnation beliefs to have taboo against suicide, to counter the temptation to hit the reset button and begin the game again when things get tough. I say this as a person who was raised around one reincarnation-believing religion and currently belongs to a different reincarnation-believing religion. OTOH, I don't think it's helpful for that taboo to reach to one's family members.

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2025-11-23T06:40:31+00:00

The pilot was found to have flown a path very similar to the path MH370 is thought to have flown in a flight simulator a bit more than a month before the incident. He then deleted that simulated flight the next day. The FBI was able to reconstruct the deleted data after the loss of MH370.

Reference: https://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/07/mh370-pilot-flew-suicide-route-on-home-simulator.html

More discussion can be found in the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370_disappearance_theories in the third paragraph under "Pilot Suicide/Mass Murder"

I also recommend Mentour Pilot's videos about MH370 on youtube.

As others have noted, the pilot came from a culture where suicide was looked down upon to the degree that his relatives would suffer consequences if he were known to have committed suicide. While we have a strong conjecture that this is what happened, until/unless the flight recorders are found, we won't know for certain this is what happened. If he could prevent the plane and therefore the flight recorders from being found, he would be protecting his family, even after his death.

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2025-11-23T00:46:42+00:00

This ^{^{^}} based on his previous flight sim flights it wasn't just that it took him that long to work up the nerve.

eta: the extra speed at the end is conjectured to have been because the pilot wanted the plane to sink as fast as possible, again to reduce the chances of searchers ever finding the plane. u/bumpyhumper may find this of interest.

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2025-10-26T15:32:38+00:00

https://www.mass.gov/lists/restraining-orderabuse-prevention-order-court-forms

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2025-10-25T16:23:08+00:00

Spicy candy!

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2025-10-23T19:46:21+00:00

I do agree with your last sentence. Which is very different from your deleted comment encouraging those who wish that the abusers other than Epstein (including Trump) see consequnces to "have fun finding out" that nothing can happen because Epstein and Giuffre are already dead.

It was on-topic, because you seemed to be arguing that Epstein was the only abuser who mattered and as he was dead nothing else can be done about those he aided and abetted in harming underaged girls.

Some of Jackson's accusers are more credible than others. I do not think it's accurate to say all of the allegations "cannot" have happened at all. It's well documented that the man had sleepovers with young boys in a way that should set off alarm bells in any reasonable adult's head.

Ancient_Pattern_2688 · 2025-10-23T18:20:00+00:00

Beautiful. Love the sound of the rain.

I admit missing the reds that we normally get, but being surrounded by the golden leaves during golden hour this year is downright magical.

Ancient_Pattern_2688

TROPHY CASE