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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 6th, 2023

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  • Both ways can work. Looking up words, and trying to guess the meaning from context. I use both, depending on my mood and the situation.

    I like trying to guess the meaning because you have to think things through. That helps you remember the answer. Doesn’t matter if you got it right or wrong. It’s not always easy, but it gets better with practice.

    You can usually look at the situation and narrow it down to a few possibilities. If my guess seems decent enough to get the gist, I keep going. Usually, you’ll find something that helps you figure out if you were right.

    If I see a word several times, I usually look it up. Otherwise, it’s probably not that important (unless I happen to be curious).

    And if I look up a word and forget it, no big deal. Happens all the time. I’ll either come across it again, or it wasn’t that important.

    It can be slow going, no matter what option you choose. But if you keep at it, you can get to a point where you rarely have to look things up.


  • Some kids have died at camps like this. The link is the story of a 16 year old who died in Arizona in 1994.

    He had to hike for miles a day and sleep with no blanket or sleeping bag in temperatures below freezing. He had no food for 11 days out of 20, partly as a punishment for being sick.

    He complained about being sick for weeks - stomach pain, falling down, hallucinations. On the day he died, it took him an hour to crawl 20 feet to the fire. He died from an infection from a perforated ulcer. The staff were standing around making fun of him when he collapsed for the last time.

    The owners of the camp pleaded guilty to negligent homicide. One of the counselors was convicted of felony neglect.

    Earlier this year, a 12 year old suffocated to death at a wilderness camp in North Carolina. His death was found to be a homicide.



  • That’s what I thought too, but bones are about 1/3 protein with a lot of fat and minerals. Kind of like tonkotsu broth.

    They also store well. If the vultures find more than they need, they’ll keep the extra bones in a storage place really high up. The fat content drops a lot when the bones dry out, but the protein is still there.

    The downside is bones don’t have a lot of water, so bearded vultures need a source of fresh water in their territory.




  • Maybe it depends on what you watch. I use Youtube for music (only things that I search for) and sometimes live streams of an owl nest or something like that.

    If I stick to that, the recommendations are sort of OK. Usually stuff I watched before. Little to no clickbait or random topics.

    I clicked on one reaction video to a song I listened to just to see what would happen. The recommendations turned into like 90% reaction videos, plus a bunch of topics I’ve never shown any interest in. U.S. politics, the death penalty in Japan, gaming, Brexit, some Christian hymns, and brand new videos on random topics.




  • Eventually, Hecker’s inclusion on the 2018 roster produced the most serious ramification for him. A member of the US military went to law enforcement and reported that he was a teenager in 1975 when Hecker, then a staff member at his high school, strangled him unconscious in a church bell tower – pretending to teach him a wrestling move – then sodomized him.

    The archdiocese of New Orleans waited to turn over Hecker’s complete personnel file until June 2023, when it received a subpoena from the local district attorney. Three months later, a grand jury empaneled by the DA charged Hecker with aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature and theft.

    He’s now claiming he’s not competent to face the charges because he has short-term memory loss. If you read the second article, that doesn’t sound believable (scroll down to number 5).

    At the deposition itself, Trahant bluntly asked Hecker: “Do you have a problem remembering things from 15 minutes ago?”

    “No,” Hecker answered.



  • Yeah. Business Insider had a good long read on that. I think it was posted before, but it’s worth reading.

    In addition to their financial struggles, all of the hospitals shared three things in common. They all served low-income communities that suffered from a lack of access to healthcare. They were all owned at various points by for-profit investors, including leading private-equity firms like Cerberus, Leonard Green, and Apollo. And in a move that stripped the hospitals of one of their prime assets, the owners had sold the land beneath the facilities to a little-known real-estate investor called Medical Properties Trust. MPT, which has purchased some $16 billion of hospital real estate over the past two decades, now bills itself as one of the world’s largest owners of hospital beds.

    For many of the hospitals, the deals proved disastrous. Once their real estate was sold to MPT, they were forced to pay rent on what had always been their own property. That added to the massive debt burdens already placed on the hospitals by their for-profit owners, deepening their financial woes. It also deprived Americans of desperately needed healthcare and put lives at risk — all while enriching some of the world’s wealthiest investors.


  • But I occasionally, like once a month or less, run a short load if they really need me to. That makes me still exempt and is still legal for them to do.

    That could be illegal, depending on what state you’re in. I don’t think it’s right that laws about this can vary so much from state to state, but the difference can be night and day.

    Even if you’re in a state that’s better about protecting workers, you have to be ready to put up a fight. It can take years, and it’s not uncommon for a company to keep doing the same thing after the case is over.




  • The ones that interest you the most will be easiest to stick with. I find things just through my general interests and poking around.

    Favorite music genre? Listen to bands from different countries and see how they sound. TV shows, movies, and documentaries from other countries are another big one. Listen to the original language, see if it sounds interesting, maybe read a little about it.

    Or maybe you know someone who you’d like to be able to talk with in their language. It could be anything. Pick one or two things to try and you’ll get a feel for what you like.



  • Oh yeah, the yellow European style butter was a revelation when I found out about it. It tastes way better and is less watery than the pale American butter.

    I never heard of filtered milk. Milk is milk for the most part, but once I made the mistake of buying it on clearance. Grabbed it without looking because the price for a normal gallon freaked me out. It wasn’t spoiled, but it was super watery and had a weird color.


  • Some people do, yeah. I’ve always used stainless steel cause it’s what I had. Takes a little practice to get it to not stick, but after that it’s fine. I heat the empty pan on medium, medium high until it’s pretty hot. If you add a drop of water, it should bead up and roll. Then add the oil, wait until it shimmers, and add the eggs.

    Enameled cast iron is nice too. It’s non-stick and not as heavy as a regular cast iron.