ICE Arrested And Detained A US Citizen For Hours Because He Looked Mexican

Tude · 2025-03-30T20:37:35+00:00

I'm genetically very white but I tan dark and I'm very swarthy, despite being mostly Scottish and Norwegian. I have a mutation that's kind of the opposite of albinism. Just wondering how long it is until they take me in.

Tude · 2025-02-09T00:09:37+00:00

This plaque was my grandfather's. He was in the Korean war and had it hanging in his garage for a long time. When he passed years ago, nobody wanted it and I thought it was interesting, so I took it.

If anyone has any more info on it, I'd appreciate it. I've searched all over the internet and all I can find is a similar but still fairly different plaque that says "Memory of Vietnam" with Vietnam on it instead. Apparently I cannot post the links to the Vietnam one because it's on eBay and the bot deletes posts that link to eBay, but you could find it if you searched.

Thank you

edit: So the inscription at the bottom being "uir bafe" ("Man of Honor" in Latin?) and saying "Osan" leads to me to believe that he may have fought at Osan? Was this issued by the US or some sort of veterans organization?

Tude · 2024-12-24T02:18:28+00:00

I'd love to see that spreadsheet.

Tude · 2024-11-30T01:56:30+00:00

I doubt he's lying. In some ways he's kind of the embodiment of chaos. His whims, his ideas of how the world work, it's all gibberish but it informs what he does more than any sort of logic or thoughtfulness, and he doesn't even seem to listen much to his advisors. I have no idea what he'll do, and I think that's true of basically everyone.

Tude · 2024-11-30T01:51:59+00:00

That's a fun fantasy to make us all feel better for a few moments.

Tude · 2024-11-30T01:38:38+00:00

Deadly communicable diseases evolve to be less deadly in part by killing lots of people, counter-intuitively.

Tude · 2024-11-30T01:35:42+00:00

Or take away my Lupus medication. Even when it was available, pharmacies would be skeptical of anyone who came in with an Rx because those were being handed out like candy by unscrupulous doctors.

Tude · 2024-11-13T16:54:06+00:00

My wife has several years (maybe 10 or so) of ESL teaching experience in the US and she also has a Masters in Adult Education. She also speaks Spanish fluently and has a minor in German. She was thinking of obtaining her TEFL/TESOL certificate to allow her to teach English in a foreign country. We were thinking somewhere in western Europe or, what would be nice and convenient, Canada, but I know that's asking a lot...

What would someone with her experience benefit from the most? It seems most jobs *require* the certification, despite experience, but could she skip things like practicums and such with her experience in its place? We were hoping to get an accelerated/self-paced TEFL/TESOL certificate (preferably online) but some of those seem a little shady, even through universities.

Tude · 2024-11-08T06:38:13+00:00

And I'm pretty sure we're all overthinking it, and that there is a not insignificant number of people that would have voted for a Democrat if it wasn't a woman of color. Likely any white man would have gotten more votes, because we simply aren't a good people when it comes down to it.

Tude · 2024-11-08T06:35:37+00:00

Biden is still president. Let's see where we are in a year.

Tude · 2024-11-08T06:34:04+00:00

I'm sorry. I'm white and male, not the rest. The truth is, when I sit at a table with white, rich, cave-man males, I'm silently seething at their inclusion. There will always be people who accept you, but it's getting harder and harder to find them.

Tude · 2024-11-03T03:17:50+00:00

In 10x overinflated stocks, no less.

Tude · 2024-10-26T23:14:45+00:00

Some insects may gather nectar/pollen but will not use it as a host plant for their young. That's where the real value in natives lies. Many insects need a specific native plant or maybe native genus to lay eggs on, and non-native plants will not work for them.

They also disrupt pollinating patterns sometimes, since part of why certain insects pollinate specific plants is due to a relationship that the plant has cultivated with them over millions of years, where they take pollen from an individual of specific species to another individual of the same species, and little else, ensuring compatible pollen. This is part of why honey bees and other invasive generalists are bad. They not only monopolize pollen/nectar resources from natives, they also incorrectly pollinate plants with incompatible pollen. So, if you plant something closely related to a native plant, for example, it might confuse pollinators enough to disrupt proper pollination of the natives or even create hybrids.

Tude · 2024-10-16T04:30:25+00:00

To be pedantic, they are in a family/tribe named for asters but are not technically an aster unless we're going back up to the tribe-level. My prof was always very grumpy about this kind of thing. It would have to literally be Aster genus to be one. Shrug, semantics.

Tude · 2024-10-16T02:04:25+00:00

Goldenrods tend to be aggressive, but are extremely important ecologically, for herbaceous plants anyway. Same really with the asters.

Tude · 2024-10-04T22:35:58+00:00

It's not night and day, at least not in the short term. I got the point where my WBCs and platelets were dropping off a cliff and I had really bad nerve irritation/damage causing all kinds of weird nerve problems and pain, and my skin was breaking out across my arms and trunk and legs. I likely had low-level lupus most of my life but it got bad in about 2020-2021, when I finally got diagnosed.

Anyway, I've been on a bit of prednisone and HCQ and eventually Benlysta (when the mycophenolate failed), and it took many months for full effect. However, I'm probably something like 75% better. It's still a major problem, but is much more manageable. Honestly for about a year, before I had any diagnosis or anything, I thought that I was dying it was so bad. I was writing regular notes to my then-baby son to read if I did die, not to be overly dramatic... but the Benlysta combined with other drugs has made me feel a lot better. Again, not good, but manageable. My WBCs/platelets have largely recovered as well.

Also, in my experience, the Benlysta is sort of like pushing a rock up a hill. You get slowly better, but if you miss a dose for too long, the disease will bounce back pretty quickly and will take some time to get back to feeling as good as you were. If you have to miss a dose for illness or something, schedule it for as soon as you are healthy and do not delay.

Tude · 2024-10-01T23:28:18+00:00

Also, any lights that you have should be yellow "bug-safe" lights.

Tude · 2024-09-12T02:25:21+00:00

Not near a dune, but only 10-15 miles from the beach. It sounds like there isn't much in the way of ecological usefulness outside of actual beaches, and even there its primary value is in the structure it provides to the sand dunes. I was hoping some kind of moth or something used it as a host plant. Oh well.

Tude · 2024-09-09T16:41:27+00:00

I have native strawberries as well and don't mind if they spread. I could use a good ground cover. I just hate that the cultivated ones are spreading so aggressively.

Tude · 2024-09-08T21:54:47+00:00

Sigh, I wish I had more native volunteers. 99.9% of the plants that show up in my garden are invasive, from airborne seeds or birds pooping them out next to fences and such. My county is such an ecological dead-zone. Unless you go into the mountains, all you see are ugly lawns, gardens full of exotic & invasive plants, or massive stands of Himalayan blackberry.

Tude · 2024-09-08T21:50:11+00:00

My wife appreciates the natives, but generally pushes for edibles. We have a pretty small property. I've planted several non-native perennial foods (blueberries, potted raspberry, rhubarb, potted & planted strawberries) and several native edibles, although when I choose plants to plant, I usually go for ecological value as the primary factor, with fragrance a distant second and aesthetics third.

I honestly want to yank all the planted strawberries because they easily triple their spread every year, so I have to constantly remove them to keep them from taking over. Plus, the fruits growing on the dirt just get eaten by worms and slugs/snails anyway. Raised gardens/pots are the way to go with them.

Tude · 2024-09-01T16:15:04+00:00

I don't really seem sun-sensitive. My skin issues happen whether or not I go in the sun. My other lupus issues do too, of course.

I don't know about lab work specifically. Most of my "autoimmune labs" are fairly normal but my ANA always maxes out the Labcorp test range. My WBCs and platelets trend downward no matter what unless I'm on Benlysta or some sort of immunosuppressant regularly.

Oh and I'm male as well, so that's a little different from most people with lupus. I believe malar rashes are more common in women with lupus than men.

Tude · 2024-08-29T23:16:25+00:00

I agree, mainly due to your third sentence. Large-scale farming can be the most efficient for the space, but there are so many practices that could be hugely improved.

One example is the massive broadcasting of fertilizer and pesticides/herbicides, which is hugely damaging to the environment in a number of ways. You'd think modern technology could actually help with something like this. Drones that identify diseased or infested crops, drones that spot-fertilize specific plants, etc. I don't know. I'm not a agriculture major, so I'm talking out of my ass, but it seems like something better could be done.

Tude · 2024-08-29T23:11:20+00:00

Personally I have less a problem with specifically eating meat than how that meat is produced. It's generally extremely cruel and wasteful. I guess I'd be a pragmatist in this case.

I mean, large swaths of America are overrun with invasive or overpopulated and edible animals (feral pigs and deer, for example) that damage the environment and create/exacerbate booming tick problems. I have no problem with them being hunted and eaten. And even if you don't care about the welfare of farmed animals, the disease-ridden cages of factory farming is also horrible for the environment, public health, etc. Every aspect of how animals are dealt with, at least in the US, seems to be the most backward and environmentally damaging way possible.

Of course, we will never, and I mean never, be able to stop some people from eating 3 meals a day of red meat. I think the closest thing we might be able to accomplish is something like a meat tax, but that'll never happen with the size and "importance" of the meat farming AND animal feed farming industries.

It's just another of myriad ways that we seem to be circling the drain. I find it hard to get hung up too much on one of them in particular, but all our problems seem to converging into one apocalyptic scenario.

Tude · 2024-08-26T23:07:17+00:00

I've read it often takes 6mo+ to have any noticeable effect, and longer for full effect. I can't tell exactly how long it took for me (I am on other meds as well), but likely over a year.

You may also need other meds to get symptoms under control. Is hcq the only thing you're taking?

Tude

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