So, I did immigration casework for Senator Fritz Hollings, studied immigration law at law school under a former INS general counsel, and worked for a border Congressman in the district that included the Rio Grande Valley. So hear me out:
1. These people in detention have not committed a crime.
2. I don’t mean that in a moral or a figurative sense. I mean literally. It is NOT a crime to ask for asylum.
3. These people didn’t jump a fence, they didn’t sneak into the back yard. They are knocking on the front door and saying “People are trying to kill me in my home country, will you let me in?”
4. Now, I didn’t fall off the turnip truck. Some of these people are lying. That’s why you have a hearing. And because they might wander off, these people are held in detention until the hearing.
5. This hearing is NOT in a criminal court. It’s in an immigration court. Because these people have not committed a crime.
6. Immigration court is not like criminal court. You don’t have a right to an attorney.
7. So these people are waiting around, separated from their children, with no attorney, until they get a hearing.
8. In 2015, the median wait for an immigration hearing was 404 days.
9. Here’s where it gets even more twisted.
10. If people plead guilty to asylum fraud, they get their kids back and get deported.
11. So these people knock on the front door, which is perfectly legal, and we take their kids, and tell them the quickest way to get them back is to confess.
12. If someone committed a crime – shoplifting, armed robbery, murder – and you took their kids away to make them confess, that confession would be thrown out.
13. But these confessions are lawful, because this isn’t criminal court.
14. Because these people haven’t committed a crime.
15. Now some people think that if we make it so unpleasant for these people, they will stop trying to cross the border.
16. But the message this sends isn’t “Go Home.” The message it sends is “Sneak in.”
17. If they go home, they think they will be murdered. If they request asylum, they are separated from their children.
18. If they sneak in successfully, they’re safe. If they sneak in and get caught, they are no worse off than if they sought asylum legally.
19. And remember, these people haven’t committed a crime.]
Koko was 46 years old. I remember reading stories about her years ago as she and her human caretakers were busting barriers about cognition among primates other than humans. Sad.
Koko and her longtime caretaker, Penny Patterson, are seen with a kitten. (Ron Cohn/The Gorilla Foundation/Koko.org)
Excerpt:
Koko, a beloved gorilla that learned to communicate with humans and then stole their hearts, has died.
The Gorilla Foundation said the 46-year-old celebrity ape — a western lowland gorilla — died in her sleep earlier this week at the organization’s preserve in Northern California. The Gorilla Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works to study and protect great apes, said in a statement that Koko will be most remembered “as the primary ambassador for her endangered species.”
“Koko touched the lives of millions as an ambassador for all gorillas and an icon for interspecies communication and empathy,” the statement said. “She was beloved and will be deeply missed.”
The gorilla was born at the San Francisco Zoo on Independence Day in 1971, according to the Gorilla Foundation, and named Hanabi-ko, which means “fireworks child” in Japanese, though she was mainly known by her nickname, Koko.
It was in San Francisco where the newborn gorilla met a budding psychologist, Francine “Penny” Patterson. By the next year, Patterson had started teaching the animal an adapted version of American Sign Language, which she dubbed “Gorilla Sign Language,” or GSL. Video footage from that time shows Patterson playing games with the young gorilla and trying to teach her a new way to communicate.
Koko was featured in National Geographic twice — the first time in 1978 when a photo she took of herself made the magazine’s cover. This week, National Geographic republished that cover story, written by Patterson, along with an editor’s note.
Remember that Koko loved kittens and cats. Here’s a recent (2018) update about Koko’s continuing relationships with her feline friends:
I mean, I have literally had the diagnosis for like, a week, so I haven’t got much to go on 😀 Mine is specifically exercise-induced, it only happens when I run, so my inhaler is a preventative, I use it before I run. I’m afraid I can’t help much, Anon!
Readership, if you want to chime in feel free, but remember to do it in comments or reblogs, not asks!
Coughing and nose running can be asthma symptoms. If you suddenly are coughing a ton or your nose won’t stop running, use your inhaler.
Keep your emergency inhaler with you and physically accessible 24/7. (I fail this constantly, but I know I should.) You will think it is unnecessary and that you will definitely not need it until you definitely, definitely do.
More applicable to children than adults, but: do not allow other people to separate you from your inhaler or put you in a situation where you will have to jump through hoops, go to another room and/or ask for it while you can’t breathe.
I don’t personally use one, but some people use medical masks on a daily basis to reduce attacks that are caused by air irritants (allergens, smoke, etc). So, that’s an option if you’re getting a lot of attacks.
This is more a general allergy thing, but: high allergy exposure actually causes and worsens anxiety. If you also have anxiety or panic problems and suddenly are having a ton of problems for no apparent reason, it’s entirely possible that it’s because of a spike in allergens and has nothing to do with you at all.
Some inhalers need to be washed regularly and/or primed before you use them, and the way you take all inhalers isn’t identical (in particular, some you start inhaling before you press the button, some at the same time). Read the instructions and find out, before you have an attack. It is hard to look up instructions and understand them while you can’t breathe.
Seriously who the hell are these people censoring random ass words all the time??
d*ckheads
from what I can tell, the people censoring random words all the time are doing it because they want to get around other people’s tumblr saviour blacklists.
on the super-lefty side of tumblr it’s pretty common for people to have huge blacklists that filter out hundreds if not thousands of words, including references to anything remotely upsetting or controversial
If you want your post about rape or murder or someone dying to make it past everyone’s blacklist, you thus have to disemvowel yourself.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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