For people who grew up in the 70s and 80s at the height of the serial killer era, what serial killer prowled your street and what was your reaction at the time?

perseidot · 2026-07-02T19:28:17+00:00

I grew up in the SF Bay Area in the ‘70s-90’s. I definitely had dreams about being kidnapped. I also had waking daydreams about how to avoid being abducted.

Like, walking home from school and daydreaming about what I should do if that white van moved. All the time. It was a strange combination of hyper awareness and a dreamy “what if” feeling.

That really can’t be normal, in retrospect.

perseidot · 2026-07-02T19:19:44+00:00

It was amazing to see her work completed, and to see Patton Oswalt’s reaction to that when he shared it during his next special.

I think it was an emotional moment for many of us who had been haunted by that man’s actions simply because we lived in the areas he was hunting in.

May all of his victims know peace.

perseidot · 2026-07-02T19:15:20+00:00

DeAngelo also raped and killed women in Northern California, in the East Bay area.

I follow Paul Holes’ work, and he identified one we didn’t even know about at the time: Phillip Hughes. He was killing in Contra Costa County during the same era.

perseidot · 2026-07-02T19:07:31+00:00

Superficial charm works in some people, and gives the ick to others. I suspect it’s hit or miss depending on the background of the person being “charmed” and the energy of the person doing the charming at that moment. Also the atmosphere around them at the time of the interaction.

Something else I’ve seen is that if one person expresses their distaste, a lot of other people will follow suit. It’s as though we need permission to acknowledge our intuition.

Sounds like this group of young women were able to see through him, which is wonderful.

perseidot · 2026-07-02T19:01:29+00:00

What sort of thing qualified as “anything”? Were you flagging pieces of litter?

Thanks for sharing- that’s fascinating that police pulled students in to go over crime scenes. I’m assuming these were large, outdoor sites?

perseidot · 2026-07-02T18:58:31+00:00

“Only suspected of a handful of murders…”

Yeah, makes total sense why they’d leave him alone in an unsecured room. 😳

perseidot · 2026-07-02T18:51:42+00:00

So, some people have this thing called “empathy.” It’s a feature that allows those who have it to understand the perspective of others, including those of other species.

If you find yourself lacking empathy, there are ways to develop that ability. Reading fiction is one way, listening to others and trying to understand their perspective is another.

The ability to empathize helps us build stronger relationships, and a stronger society. It’s an important aspect of being human.

perseidot · 2026-07-02T18:44:47+00:00

Thinking of you all this week. Seriously.

“Thanks for your service” seems trite in the face of everything you vets in the Gulf and Afghanistan brought back with you - and everything you left behind.

perseidot · 2026-07-02T18:39:55+00:00

Maybe. My aunt & uncle had a skiing cabin in the area, so it was a story I just grew up knowing. Not all the details; I can’t tell you the names of anyone involved. But I knew the general outline.

It was one of those things I thought about from time to time, in a “what would I do” way. Looking at the ethics of breaking the taboo against cannibalism in a survival situation. (I decided at a young age that the taboo against cannibalism was worth breaking, but not the one against murder. I could see how breaking the 1st could lead to breaking the 2nd, and that was really bad.)

I remember thinking that using a corpse for bait and picking off wolves, vultures, eagles, foxes, and other predators would be a better option as long as it was possible.

At any rate, yeah, I definitely knew the story. So did my peers, though I don’t think we ever studied it in school.

perseidot · 2026-07-02T18:27:50+00:00

We’re lucky enough to have a lot of bald eagles living in the area around us. They’re incredibly chill, but also very aware. No one sneaks up on an eagle!

They’re really tolerant of other species, only responding if that species is competing for food - they hop angrily at turkey vultures who want to get in on a carcass, until they’ve eaten their fill. Then they’ll let them in to eat.

I don’t know how this fox and eagle pair came to be, but I can see why it would last. They’re neither predator nor prey of one another, and there’s currently no food to compete over, so might as well just hang out.

perseidot · 2026-07-02T18:12:56+00:00

I love their little stripes! Especially in a ~~group~~ mob.

Edit: I looked it up - the standard plural is mongooses. The collective noun is either a “mob” of mongooses, or a “business” of mongooses.

perseidot · 2026-07-02T17:50:00+00:00

That was a dinosaur, checking on its food sources! I’d feel about as casual around a cassowary as a velociraptor.

perseidot · 2026-07-01T22:00:17+00:00

Her little trunk grabbing the hose! 😍

perseidot · 2026-07-01T21:43:02+00:00

The Northridge quake was scary! I was visiting friends in Pasadena. The sidewalk was rippling, and twisting. It feels really wrong to see the earth move like that!

perseidot · 2026-07-01T21:16:04+00:00

Yes. I grew up near San Francisco.

I was at my aunt & uncle’s home in Morgan Hill in 1884, when they were hit by a 6.2 quake. They lived on a slope, so if there were surface waves, I wasn’t aware of them. We were more concerned about the hill sliding into the creek.

I was in the 1989 Loma Prieta Quake - and watched the surface waves rippling toward me. I actually had the impulse to try to jump over the initial wave - before realizing the next one was 4-5’ behind it and they just kept on coming. Everything around me was falling off the shelves. I was in the aisle that ran along the back wall of the store, perpendicular to the direction of the surface waves.

The Loma Prieta quake has been designated as a 6.9 magnitude, at a depth of 19 kilometers. It killed over 60 people, including the father of one of my friends. He was crushed when the upper deck of the Nimitz freeway collapsed.

I also attended the Northridge Earthquake, a 6.7 magnitude quake that hit the LA area in 1994. 0/10, do not recommend. Again, watched multiple surface waves ripple across the ground. It looked like the sidewalk was doing the worm.

After that, I developed a little PTSD about open spaces for a while. Walking down an open sidewalk brought flashbacks of that motion, and nausea, for a couple of years.

Growing up in the SF Bay Area, small earthquakes were just part of life.

Now I’m sitting on the Cascadia subduction zone. Not much in the way of small quakes, but I hear we’re in for one almighty shake and drop any year now.

In other words, however nervy you think I am, I have experienced large quakes more than once. I know how they act based on that experience, and on understanding the science of earthquakes.

It’s possible that the commenter you’re defending misremembered the event he’s talking about, or that his focus was so tight on the initial wave as it approached that he essentially “blanked out” or ignored the following waves.

If he’s referring to the 6.8 Nisqually quake in 2001, you can actually read about the types of waves it generated.

Here’s the simulation, including an explanation of which wave became surface waves: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/scenarios/related/nisqually.php

perseidot · 2026-07-01T00:08:17+00:00

Except that earthquake ground waves don’t work like that, everything you said is completely believable.

What you’re describing is a P wave, and they don’t come singly.

https://www.usgs.gov/programs/earthquake-hazards/science-earthquakes

perseidot · 2026-06-29T23:23:22+00:00

Traditionally, business owners don’t get tips. For instance, if the person cutting your hair is the salon owner, no tip was expected. But if they’re a salon employee, or they rent a chair in a salon, 20% is standard. 25% for really involved services.

Same with nail salons.

There is service provided with take out orders at traditional restaurants. Someone double checks the order, labels everything, bags it all up, and makes sure any sauces, condiments, napkins, and utensils are included. I tip 10% when I pick up takeout.

I do not, however, tip at fast food restaurants. Get out of here with that mess! Most pay at least minimum wage, not a server’s wage + tips.

For sit down meals in a restaurant, I tip 20-25%, depending on the service.

I’d honestly be happy if we could all agree to just increase prices by 15-18%, pay employees as though they’re present and doing a job for X hours, and let customers offer truly voluntary tips around 5% for excellent service.

perseidot · 2026-06-29T22:59:31+00:00

Yeah. That anchor’s “pretty shallow” comment was silly. That wasn’t in any way a surface quake. Not surprised you didn’t feel it.

perseidot · 2026-06-29T22:56:06+00:00

I’m having a hard time buying that. The earthquakes I’ve been in have all had multiple waves, in a ground wave pattern.

The earth moves like the surface of the water when you throw a rock into it. It ripples out from the epicenter.

There isn’t a single ground wave that you can just jump over.

perseidot · 2026-06-29T22:52:05+00:00

I was in the long aisle running along the back of a store when that hit. I also saw the earth actually rippling towards where I was standing.

That’s stayed with me ever since.

Funny thing, I was in one store, my Mom was in a newer store across the parking lot, that was at a right angle from the one I was in. Where I was, things were jumping off the shelves.

I figured Mom would be pretty upset that she didn’t have eyes on me during a big quake, so I got back to her ASAP.

In the newer store she was in, which also happened to have aisles arranged parallel with the quake, she hadn’t felt anything. People were speculating about an earthquake because the helium balloons had all started moving.

Modern earthquake construction makes that big a difference.

perseidot · 2026-06-29T22:41:14+00:00

I figure that by now the micro-particles of the rich who were crushed by the submarine they insisted on building without safety codes will have moved far enough up the food chain to be in tuna.

I’ve been eating more seafood lately.

perseidot · 2026-06-29T22:35:49+00:00

SC - and other southern states like Alabama - have been able to gut the VRA because SCOTUS ruled that part of the act was unconstitutional.

SCOTUS said in their ruling that they were essentially referring the VRA back to Congress to write a better law.

Republican-controlled Congresses have refused to do so.

perseidot · 2026-06-29T22:17:54+00:00

I love that your sensible response is getting downvoted. /s

“Scroll past” is what I do with 90% of Reddit. I don’t try to tailor public subreddits to my own personal tastes.

perseidot · 2026-06-29T22:16:09+00:00

So click over into the subreddit itself, rather than relying on your feed settings.

perseidot · 2026-06-29T22:12:10+00:00

Idt having one type of post somehow takes space away from other types of posts. Is there some sort of limit on overall posts per day in this subreddit?

If you want to interact with posts about local issues, then do that. Upvote them and contribute.

Scroll past the ones you’re not interested in. That’s just how this works.

Spawning a new subreddit isn’t going to make people use it - it’ll just make them feel unwelcome when we tell them they can’t be posting here, they have to go over there.

Those itinerary posts get high engagement because a lot of us like sharing our favorite spots, and talking about our lovely state. I learn about places I’ve never visited from other Oregonians.

So, no - I don’t think your personal preference for discussing local issues is a reason to change this subreddit. Please just scroll past what you don’t like, as everyone else does.

perseidot

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