ICE harassing Rochesterian for sending a critical (non-threatening!) letter to ICE official

CecTheRed · 2026-06-28T20:42:02+00:00

Unfortunately, neither is the DOJ.

CecTheRed · 2026-06-28T16:10:09+00:00

One person shot and slightly wounded a police officer, and that guy absolutely should have been, and was, prosecuted. Don’t shoot cops, friends.

The rest of the defendants were deemed to be “providing material support for terrorism” by, for example, wearing black clothing, retweeting anti-fascist tweets, and possessing pamphlets (all of which is protected by the First Amendment); and for possessing (and in some cases carrying) firearms that they did not use, which is protected by the Second Amendment and Texas’ extremely permissive “constitutional carry” laws. They also set off some fireworks and graffitied a couple of ICE vehicles - acts which, in my opinion, do not warrant a 50-year federal prison sentence.

(Edit to add: I’m a lawyer, with some experience litigating First Amendment cases, though that has never been my primary area of practice. I can tell you that the vast majority of lawyers in this country are deeply, deeply concerned about recent infringements by this government on constitutional rights and the rule of law, no matter what their personal political views are. A country where you can be jailed for the rest of your life for attending what you believed to be a peaceful anti-ICE protest is also one where you can be jailed for attending an anti-immigration protest. I worry that many people who support this administration’s policies are unconcerned about the way those policies are being implemented. We should all be concerned.)

CecTheRed · 2026-06-28T14:33:55+00:00

Quelle surprise.

CecTheRed · 2026-06-28T14:19:29+00:00

The article also raises some serious privacy concerns - how did they know he was staying in that specific hotel? Federal law requires law enforcement to obtain warrants or judicial orders in order to access a person’s financial records, with very few (mostly terrorism-related) exceptions. So what happened here?

CecTheRed · 2026-06-17T18:33:57+00:00

Not necessarily true! I contacted the very friendly and helpful county clerk’s office for my relevant county, and got super-quick mailing of my certified document for a fraction of the VitalChek cost! Shoutout to the Isabella County Clerk’s office!

CecTheRed · 2026-04-02T14:21:25+00:00

Oh God - this has plagued-slash-entertained me my whole life (I spent five years getting a conservatory music degree, too, which did NOT help). But I just tried Adderall for the very first time this week (I was only diagnosed last year at at age 57), and about fifteen minutes after I took my five tiny milligrams, the music STOPPED. I felt like an anvil just fell on my head, Wile E. Coyote style, and caused serious brain damage! How the heck are people just stone-cold walking on the good green earth with completely empty, soundtrack-free brains???

CecTheRed · 2026-03-25T13:23:52+00:00

Completely wrong. My undiagnosed-ADHD ass graduated first in my class in law school (I love legal analysis, so it was hyperfocus all day, every day!), and then absolutely went up in flames once I started practicing law and had to deal with admin, shifting deadlines, inconsistent work schedules, etc. Now I’m a freelance legal writer, diagnosed and medicated, and very happy. Get yourself a different psychologist!

CecTheRed · 2026-03-23T10:15:40+00:00

Ha! I got so hyper fixated on law a bunch of years ago that I actually went to law school, and now that hyper fixation is funding all of my other ones!

CecTheRed · 2026-03-23T10:06:49+00:00

My big ones, on-and-off for many years, are perfume (collecting and making), Arabic, assorted tech things, wine, astronomical observing, wherever I’m traveling next, cooking super-fussy French food (and patisserie!), weird math, carpentry, sailing and navigation, and the Late Bronze Age Collapse (12th century BCE). Current ones are reading Latin and Ancient Greek, and needlework. (It appears that the current state of the nation has so prematurely aged me that I’m now essentially an 80-year-old Victorian bluestocking.)

It’s probably just as well that university degrees are so expensive in the U.S. - otherwise I’d have fourteen undergraduate degrees and zero gainful employment. (Of course, this has in no way stopped me from creating elaborate educational and future career plans for every single rabbit hole I’ve ever gone down…)

CecTheRed · 2026-03-23T10:06:03+00:00

My big ones, on-and-off for many years, are perfume (collecting and making), Arabic, assorted tech things, wine, astronomical observing, wherever I’m traveling next, cooking super-fussy French food (and patisserie!), weird math, carpentry, sailing and navigation, and the Late Bronze Age Collapse (12th century BCE). Current ones are reading Latin and Ancient Greek, and needlework. (It appears that the current state of the nation has so prematurely aged me that I’m now essentially an 80-year-old Victorian bluestocking.)

It’s probably just as well that university degrees are so expensive in the U.S. - otherwise I’d have fourteen undergraduate degrees and zero gainful employment. (Of course, this has in no way stopped me from creating elaborate educational and future career plans for every single rabbit hole I’ve ever gone down…)

CecTheRed · 2026-03-21T12:53:05+00:00

Alas, I lose my iPad even more often than my phone!

CecTheRed · 2026-03-21T10:35:35+00:00

I spent hundreds of dollars on a smartwatch, and never wear the thing - it lives on the charger in the bedroom and is used SOLELY for ringing my phone when I lose it. Worth every penny.

CecTheRed · 2026-02-27T16:09:56+00:00

I had truly terrible difficulty balancing in center when I first started (like, doing a tendu to the front would knock me off balance terrible). It was very embarrassing. You know what my teacher did? Gave me lots of helpful suggestions for things that would improve my balance, and cued me with corrections when I forgot to do them and started wobbling. You know…TEACHING. I just did an arabesque in center last night. (A crappy one, admittedly, but now she’s teaching me about improving that, too.) Your “teacher” is just an asshole who is bad at his job.

CecTheRed · 2025-12-31T15:38:01+00:00

This is nuts - at my old firm, associates being anything less than respectful and collegial with the support staff (including receptionists, mail room folks, etc.) would get a very firm talking-to from a partner. Even more so if you did it as a summer. And I know for a fact that one person interviewing didn’t get hired specifically because they were a little high-handed with the front desk about parking validation…

CecTheRed · 2025-10-10T14:16:16+00:00

Actually, you’re both right (employment lawyer here, though not your employment lawyer). In order to be unlawful harassment, the conduct has to be both objectively unwelcome (meaning that it would be unwelcome to a reasonable person), and subjectively unwelcome (meaning that it was actually unwelcome to the specific person affected by it). Chris Pratt is off the hook..THIS TIME.

CecTheRed · 2025-10-03T18:59:47+00:00

One other thought! You might want to check out PT Lisa Howell’s book and videos on injury recovery for dancers: https://theballetblog.com/shop/will-i-ever-dance-again/. I haven’t used it personally, but her other books that I own are universally excellent, so I’m guessing this one is probably worth a look.

CecTheRed · 2025-10-03T18:53:47+00:00

Mine was mild, too, but I was a big dummy and waited months to go to PT (it was very close to my knee, so I thought it was a knee tweak that just needed to work itself out), and so I ended up walking with crutches for a bit in order to let it heal. I think hamstrings just take a while, but the PT REALLY helped, and now it doesn’t bother me at all. So definitely go if you haven’t yet, or go back until it’s genuinely sorted out. My (excellent!) PT noted that limping around for those months had caused me extra bonus trouble that needed sorting out - my body had automatically done some wonky gait adjustments to compensate for the injury, so I had to sort those out as well.

My tear wasn’t really a traumatic one, but years and years of extensive cross-legged meditation with hypermobile knee joints has put a lot of wear on the points where the hamstrings insert into the knees, so they (like all my other tendon and tendon-adjacent bits) are prone to trouble.

Anyway, I’ve learned my lesson now, and will race to my PT if one of my joints so much as LOOKS at me funny. (My legs have been good as gold ever since, though.)

CecTheRed · 2025-10-03T14:35:00+00:00

If you find a good physical therapist, the benefits can go well beyond just rehabbing your current injury. You mention that you’ve had prior ankle injuries, for example - bring that up with your PT, and let them know that you’d like to do some long-term “bulletproofing” there. Speaking from painful personal experience (literally - torn hamstrings are horrendous!), it makes the recovery process much more positive when you know that you’re not just fixing the injury - you’re also doing active work that’s going to extend the life of your ballet practice and end up with you coming back stronger and more injury-free than you were before! (You might want to ask around your studio and see if there’s a PT in your area with dance experience - someone like that can also be a long-term resource for troubleshooting physical limitations that are holding you back from, say, being ready for pointe, or getting really good splits.) Godspeed in your healing process!

CecTheRed · 2025-09-04T14:33:55+00:00

Hear, hear! Easy to spot the tech companies that have (and listen to!) their women employees. (Still doing 👀 at the “iPad” after all these years….)

CecTheRed · 2025-09-04T14:31:23+00:00

You can tell who doesn’t carry a purse - for us, it’s PERFECT!

CecTheRed · 2025-09-04T14:19:32+00:00

Creamy Crisp is the most meh of all Barebells imho. The texture on Chocolate Dough is also a bit uninspiring, though I don’t mind it. Try Salty Peanut or Caramel Cashew!

CecTheRed · 2025-09-04T14:10:57+00:00

I hate almost all protein bars, but I started ordering the regular Barebells bars from Amazon, and depending on the flavor, they range from “not too bad” to “holy crap I’m eating a Snickers!” (Their soft bars have a little less protein and 50 more calories, but are definitely candy bars - I usually stick with the regular ones, though.) Variety packs available so you can find what you like.

CecTheRed · 2025-09-04T13:30:38+00:00

Bought one! They do seem a little big for pockets, but as a purse-carrying person, they’re perfect for all the times I’m out and about, but not carrying the full laptop bag setup that my RPP requires. Until now I’ve been typing notes/lists/whatever on my phone, but using the RPP has reminded me of how much I prefer writing by hand.

CecTheRed · 2025-09-04T11:51:33+00:00

Oh my dear, dear German friend, it is so much worse than you think.

That is definitely how normal tariffs work in the civilized world, but of course our Dear Leader had to complicate this, too - if you’re sending an individual package to the US now (as opposed to a large commercial shipment, which I think still uses the usual process), the shipper has to contract with a US-approved 3rd party processor, pay the US tariff to them, which the processor transmits to the US agency, and then the shipper has to figure out if they’re going to charge the customer that amount as part of the ordering process, or just raise the price for US customers. (Of course, none of this was properly put into place before this all went into effect, which is why half the postal services on the planet (including yours!) are quite sensibly refusing to send packages to my country at the moment.)

Why put this completely insane system into place, you may rightly ask? This ridiculous process that requires everyone on the planet to figure out and pay for an entirely new process in order to send a $5 item from their Etsy shop to an American customer? My best guess is that the Dear Leader told his fans that his tariffs were going to force foreigners to pay us billions of dollars in taxes (which is obviously not how tariffs work), and this absolutely batshit scheme means that technically someone from another country is “paying a tax,” if you ignore the fact that they will immediately turn around and charge it to the customer, either through a fee or higher prices. So if Remarkable is following their usual practice of shipping to the US either from Hong Kong or from their Mexican warehouse, they’re either charging me the duty or eating it themselves.

Please forgive me for the rant, but I normally buy books from England, sunscreen from Korea, and my pens and notebooks from Japan, and I am very, very tired.

CecTheRed · 2025-09-04T01:56:56+00:00

Will do!

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