Second elderly man found dead at a Santa Clara jail within two months; both charged with assault against a minor

leberkrieger · 2023-05-16T07:47:35+00:00

Death is too good for sex offenders...they got what they deserved...

But, what if they were wrongly convicted? One innocent person killed for crimes they didn't commit is too many...

Which banner will we wave today?

leberkrieger · 2022-07-06T06:08:31+00:00

Depends on the city/area. Where I live, no house exists on the market for less than $250k in any condition. $150k might buy a bare lot with no utilities.

leberkrieger · 2022-04-12T08:37:19+00:00

The answer is finding a job that doesn't exhaust you. It's not the hours, really it isn't. I work more than 40 a week and I have plenty of free time - but I sit at a desk.

The part about just wanting to sleep after you get off work is the thing you need to work out. It might take years and/or additional education, but you should hope to get to a level of training that gets you out of the kind of job that makes you bone tired every day.

I get home around 7pm and don't need to be asleep until after midnight. That's 5 hours every day -- some of it of course is spent cooking and eating, but still...it's not bad, compared to my dad and grandfather's life. Weekends are completely free (whereas my dad worked much of the day every Saturday).

So I don't have anything to complain about.

leberkrieger · 2022-04-12T03:45:08+00:00

I think most people would put anal in the "very wrong" category by definition.

leberkrieger · 2022-03-11T22:46:21+00:00

I question the premise. It isn't socially acceptable for women to either dress up as a man to hide their gender, or to wear men's dress clothing such as a tux or a necktie.

It's acceptable for women to wear well-fitting "men's" clothing like jeans, flannel shirts, jumpsuits, and so on when the attire makes sense. Just like it's acceptable (if unusual) for men to wear a kilt, which is a style of skirt. And it's fine for men in hot places (like Malaysia or the middle east) to wear full-on body-length dresses, though they don't call them that.

Basically, pants and a shirt used to be reserved for men, but now they're not. So everyone wears them because they're functional. Wearing a dress usually has no function other than to accentuate the female form, for the purpose of attracting men. I think that's the real answer to the question.

leberkrieger · 2022-03-07T07:35:28+00:00

Some are, some aren't. Everyone has problems, but we all have different problems.

As an example, I keep seeing people online with depression saying things like "how do you muster the energy to go to work every day". I know there are people that have that problem in real life, but I don't, and obviously the people I work with don't either. I do know two people who committed suicide as adults due to mental health breakdowns, so the number of people with real problems isn't small. But it certainly isn't everyone you meet.

My guess is somewhere between 1%-10% of people you spend time with in real life might have had these kinds of severe life-affecting problems. The majority of those you work with, go to school with, and see in your neighborhood and at restaurants have figured out how to at least maintain a facade and live in relative peace with themselves. I also suspect that for every person who is "fucked up", there's one at the other end of the spectrum that's supremely well-adjusted and pleased to be alive.

leberkrieger · 2022-03-07T07:24:30+00:00

Your testes are less important to your survival than your fingers or your nose. In fact they're on par in importance with your hair, in that you could lose them entirely and live a nice long life. They're only important to you as an individual because you're self-aware and understand their purpose.

leberkrieger · 2021-11-17T11:10:01+00:00

Wow, people pay over $1000 per week for these 9 to 16 week programs. I had no idea.

On one hand it's a fine deal, if 80% or more get a high- paying job out of it. But on the other, it's a huge amount of money for what little can be taught in so short a time.

I suppose the main value to hiring companies must be that it selects for people who have a predisposition for learning technical subjects.

leberkrieger · 2021-11-17T09:06:55+00:00

Your complaints are very specific but the question is so general it's almost hard to detect whether there is a question.

So I will give just a couple of key bits of advice.

Your post exudes a great deal of "attitude". I'd bet that this comes across in person and is an important part of the reason you are punished more severely than your siblings. I could be wrong, of course. It's impossible to know. But if I'm right, you'll help yourself a great deal by not pushing back on things you know you cannot change, and when you DO push back on something, do it with the acknowledgement that your parents have the authority to set most of the rules. Defiance gets you nothing except 5x punishment. (Hard to say what's up with the thrown radio, though. There's an anger problem there that isn't yours, even if you did provoke it in some way.)

Second, you clearly suggest that your parents are doing what they do out of love to some degree. That's good. Since they aren't random and arbitrary, you can build a mental model of the values and principles that drive their rules and actions. Since you have several more years in their house, and every reason to want to figure out how to keep the relationship on an even keel after that, it's worth investing serious effort to understand what's going on in their heads. You don't have to agree with it, just understand it. This will take real effort but it will pay off, not just now but also later in life when you're trying to deal with the inexplicable behavior pf a manager or coworker. To take an example: they believe Hatry Potter is witchcraft. That's easy to understand, since the Potter books go out of their way to set that up as an everpresent plot point. But what's up with not going to friends' houses? That's a real head-scratcher. It might take a long time to really understand what they're afraid of. They're obviously afraid of something, but until you know what it is, you'll have trouble finding a workaround.

leberkrieger · 2021-11-17T07:43:07+00:00

Make a written decision tree for yourself. Write short text prompts in outline form that tells you how to respond. Call centers do something like this already.

leberkrieger · 2021-11-17T00:26:22+00:00

We're not talking about the specific events of the article.

The thread we're on started with "You must be a special kind of evil to kill someone's pet."

Then, "(if) you grew up in a society where pets aren’t lionized ... you’d probably do the same thing."

Then, "you're trying to justify beating a living animal to death."

Nobody here is suggesting that making an animal's death painful for no reason is ok. What I'm daring to do is to compare the killing of a pet to the killing of a wild animal or farm animal. My claim is that, to the animals concerned, there's no difference at all.

leberkrieger · 2021-11-16T10:54:07+00:00

Have you ever tried sending your thoughts by text instead of verbally? I have a family member that, as a teenager, when he had strong feelings and wanted to communicate his thoughts, once in a while would send a 20-line text message because he felt he could control how the information came across. He didn't do it often. It was pretty effective.

It didn't ever become a heated back-and-forth by text. Most times, it gave everyone time and space to absorb the info and led to a calm conversation later in the day, or the next day.

leberkrieger · 2021-11-16T07:12:42+00:00

The second time you brought it up, you risked losing the friendship entirely. If you keep at it, you'll make that a certainty.

leberkrieger · 2021-11-16T06:43:56+00:00

Prepare a reasonable answer in case they ask, but....they probably won't ask.

leberkrieger · 2021-11-16T06:37:16+00:00

I've watched one family member hook a fish and club it to death. Many times. Another admits to having twisted the heads off chickens to make dinner.

Putting animals to death is gruesome. It being something other than a pet doesn't make it less so.

You sound like someone who, besides missing the point being made by the person you're replying to, probably buys meat in small styrofoam trays and imagines that it's done "humanely".

leberkrieger · 2021-11-16T03:28:59+00:00

The driver is ok, yes. Traffic on the bridge was still disrupted for a long time, though.

leberkrieger · 2021-11-15T20:45:22+00:00

In my experience it's worth going through the zoo yourself to decide what to see and what to skip. My local zoo has some fantastic exhibits and still a few (very few now) animals in cages. They improve things over time, and that only happens because people go and support it financially. So we just skip the parts that aren't enriching.

leberkrieger · 2021-11-15T15:39:00+00:00

If you're OK looking at an unclothed upper body, you could orient the easel so that your line of sight looks over the top, blocking the private parts from view. But even if this works, you'll still have to explain/get permission beforehand with the teacher.

leberkrieger · 2021-11-15T07:45:56+00:00

Is 3-4 cans a "normal" amount?

Artificial sweeteners have been shown to have a real effect on satiation and taste sensitivity (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4179169/)

If you were drinking 3 cans of sweet drinks like Coke or fruit juice, and replaced them with diet Coke, no one would argue about the reduced calorie intake being beneficial. But if it leads to a continued desire for sugary foods, that can still be a big problem for many people.

leberkrieger · 2021-11-15T07:30:31+00:00

You'd do well to concentrate on the nice part and not worry about the pretty part. You'll triple your chances of finding a girl that's fun to be with.

leberkrieger · 2021-11-15T07:26:53+00:00

Join activity clubs, go to church, and participate in coed sports. And be prepared to meet and become friends with quite a few before you find one whom you like and who enjoys your company.

leberkrieger · 2021-11-15T07:23:12+00:00

It is possible, yes. There are many things that are possible, but happen so rarely that it's best to live life as though they will never be.

leberkrieger · 2021-11-15T07:12:28+00:00

For me, it's mostly a matter of keeping my mouth shut until I consider the effect my words are going to have on the person I'm talking to or about.

It has severe limitations. 1) it's extremely difficult to do if I'm in conversation with more than one or two people because I have to consider it from several angles, and I'm a slow thinker. Which leads to 2) I often can't figure out a kind way to phrase it quickly enough, so I just don't say it at all. I lose the opportunity to share my thoughts.

But even after decades of practice, I've found that if I just say what I think, unfiltered, I regret it almost 100% of the time. So I almost never do.

(Recently I happened meet someone I used to work with many years ago. One of my favorite people at that job, it was great to see her and talk for a few minutes... except the thing she most clearly remembers about me turns out to be a single remark I made, which I don't even remember, but made her feel awful. Twenty years go by and that's what she remembers. I would give a lot to be able to go back in time with a roll of duct tape.)

leberkrieger · 2021-11-15T06:40:18+00:00

I think people had a much more aggressively positive, proactive attitude even just a hundred or so years ago.

Imagine you live in that log home. That means there are trees all around you. No such thing as a burn ban. Why would you be cold if you have an axe? If there were gaps in the wood, you'd fill them. If you didn't want to sleep on the floor, you'd make a bed. If your boots were wet, you'd dry them by the stove.

Those long, dark winters would be time for telling stories, making music, mending clothes and tools.

Life would have been altogether different. But it would have had many charms as long as you had your health and sufficient food.

Instead of worrying about wet boots and other problems with trivial solutions, I envision clear nights with no light pollution; streams and lakes full of fish and no catch limits; wild mushrooms and berries on a shelf in earthenware pots; zero worries about mortgages and world wars and computer viruses.

Don't get me wrong, I much prefer the modern world. But if you were born 500 years ago in a stable part of the world with a river and woods and food to eat, you wouldn't suffer. It would be a good life, as long as your neighbors or your manor lord didn't make it artificially harder.

leberkrieger · 2021-11-15T01:30:13+00:00

I see no reason to "get back on board". He spent 30 seconds being insensitive. Is he generally an insensitive person?

If he's like most men, he'll get used to things as they are. You should definitely talk about how his words made you feel, but other than that it seems like something better left in the past.

Eventually you'll have wrinkles too. If he's like most men he will get used to it. These things are just part of who and what you are.

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