“An investigation into the death of an isolated inmate at Maryland Correctional Institution for Women has found the prison ran afoul of the U.S. Constitution as well as the state’s constitution and the Americans with Disabilities Act.”
On this day, 4 December 1969, Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was murdered while asleep in his bed during a raid on his apartment by Chicago Police in conjunction with the FBI. He was killed along with three other Panther activists. Aged just 21, he was an active, charismatic and effective organiser, who had been making significant inroads into making links with working class whites and predominately white radical groups before his murder.
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Pictured: Grinning police take out his body https://ift.tt/2KTBY6X
I normally obey a very, very profound taboo against the depiction of human remains of any kind.
“Insulin products costs very little to manufacturer, but prices have skyrocketed in recent years. A vial of insulin that once cost around $25 now goes for about $400 to $500. The activists are demanding that Sanofi immediately lower the price of its insulin products by 90 percent.
…"Dr. Vikas Saini, co-director of the Right Care Alliance and an organizer of the protest, pointed to recent researchshowing that the cost of manufacturing insulin is so low that companies like Sanofi could drastically reduce their prices and still enjoy a 500 percent retail markup. Saini said insulin has been around for a century and costs about $5 to manufacture, so nobody should die from lack of access.
…"Under a for-profit health system, even people who have health coverage can find medicine unaffordable.
…"The three major insulin manufacturers have come under increasing pressure to lower prices as this crisis continues to make headlines.
…"A class-action lawsuit filed in a federal court in New Jersey accuses Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi of acting like an insulin “cartel” and raising prices “in lockstep,” and the court recently granted the Type 1 Diabetes Defense Foundation permission pursue a parallel lawsuit against insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers for their role in the affordability crisis, along with manufacturers.”
Getting Wasted on Torpedo Fuel During World War II,
During World War I the United States Navy first instituted a rule decreeing that no alcoholic beverages were permitted on ship. This didn’t mean that drinking stopped entirely on US Naval vessels, crafty sailors still found ways to smuggle alcohol on board or produce their own. During World War II many sailors resorted to drinking the fuel from the Mark 14 torpedo. The Mark 14 was the standard torpedo used by the US Navy in early World War II which could be dropped from the air, used by surface ships, and used by submarines. To power the torpedo the Mark 14′s engine burned 180 proof (90%) ethyl alcohol. For those who don’t know, ethyl alcohol is the potable type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages. Sailors would mix the torpedo fuel with juice, preferably pineapple juice but also whatever they could get their hands on. The drink was commonly known as “torpedo juice”.
In response to an outbreak of sailors boozing on torpedo fuel, the US Navy began denaturing the fuel, which means they would add a 5-10% mixture of methyl alcohol to the fuel. Whereas ethyl alcohol is potable, methyl alcohol is poisonous, causing blindness or death when consumed. Denaturing was a process created during the Prohibition Era to prevent people from drinking non-beverage sources of alcohol such as fuel, cleaners, and sterilizing agents. The idea is that if you mixed it with poison people would be smart enough not to drink it. In reality, people drank it anyway causing thousands of deaths.
To this day denaturing is still done and taken for granted without a thought despite many thousands of people being poisoned to death, not just desperate boozers looking for a cheap drink but accidental poisonings of children. Regardless, the Federal Government and most other governments have yet to change their policies on denaturing. I guess it’s worth it to keep people from getting drunk on rubbing alcohol. However, the US Navy did modify it’s policy regarding fuel alcohol. Like denaturing in the civilian world, denaturing of torpedo fuel only led to hundreds of deaths of sailors by methanol poisoning. Sailors would try various methods of filtering out the methyl alcohol, some as harebrained as running it through a loaf of bread. Most methods failed resulting in illness and death. Thus, the US Navy ceased denaturing of torpedo fuel but substituted methanol with croton oil, which is a potent laxative. The Navy figured that if they weren’t going to poison sailors who broke the rules by drinking torpedo fuel, they could at least give them a really bad case of the runs. Unlike methyl alcohol however, croton oil can be successfully removed from alcohol, in particular through distillation. All over the Navy sailors constructed crude stills to distill the alcohol from the croton oil.
So then the Navy found itself back to square one, with it’s hands full of unruly sailors drunk on torpedo fuel. The problem was mostly resolved however with the invention of the Mark 18 torpedo. The Mark 14 torpedo had several problems; it often failed to detonate or detonated too early, it would run too deep, it would run in circles, and of course sailors were getting smashed on it’s fuel. Thus in late 1943 the US Navy adopted the Mark 18 torpedo, which was much more reliable, more economical, and utilized an electric engine. Thus no need for alcohol fuel. At that point, much of the supply of underground booze in the US Navy dried up.
If you want to “relive” World War II history and make torpedo juice for yourself, it’s relatively simple. Just mix one part 190 proof grain alcohol such as Everclear (found at any liquor store) with three parts pineapple juice. Please don’t use methyl alcohol or denatured alcohol. Don’t eat Tide pods either you dumb shits.
So, update on the asshole who got himself killed by deliberately trespassing on Sentinel Island… He was not a missionary, but a travel blogger masquerading as a missionary to gain access and treat the Sentinelese as a zoo exhibit (whilst exposing them to germs, and encouraging other intruders).
Again: It is illegal for outside people to barge onto Sentinel Island (borders: they kinda work that way. And a lot of white Americans seem real excited about ‘protecting the border’ with deadly force. Just saying.)
The last outsiders to arrive kidnapped a bunch of Sentinelese people and also introduced deadly diseases, so they have more than enough reasons to use force to fend off invasion.
This asshole was warned multiple time not to go there.
He was going for some extreme travel adventure blog, which is the epitome of colonizer nonsense: disrespecting indigenous sovereignty, endangering indigenous lives, and treating indigenous people like a zoo exhibit, all so he could make a quick buck.
PS. Thanks for getting the right-wing Christian crowd all riled up against indigenous people with your missionary stunt, bro!
Wow, and it got worse.
The article does say he was a travel blogger, but nothing about him pretending to be a missionary. How do you know he wasn’t genuinely both?
Those things really don’t seem mutually exclusive. Sweet setup, coming from a certain mindset 😱
A white man was throwing racial slurs at a Black FedEx Driver. He started Punching the driver, the FedEx driver punched him back one time, killing the man with One Punch.
He wont be indicted for the racist scumbags death either! Win!
Magnuson’s death from the fall was precipitated by “extremely poor health,” a medical examiner concluded, and the punch itself was not fatal, Senior Deputy District Attorney Adam Gibbs wrote.
Warren was within his legal right to challenge Magnuson’s “racist vitriol,” Gibbs noted, and said that Warren’s decision to confront Magnuson — rather than ignore him — was not legally significant.
Please keep up this energy of racists dropping dead on my dash.
I feel bad for the driver. Even though the guy was a racist, I’m sure he didn’t wake up that day wanting to kill someone. He just wanted to be left alone to do his job.
Just reminded of one Irish friend years ago talking about her surprise after she came to London, at just how differently people here tend to handle death.
Apparently, funerals tend to be much smaller and more private affairs. And she was amazed to run into actual adults who had never been to one.
Same, tbh. I can’t even remember the first funeral I got dragged to as a little kid. (The first would have been an uncle who had a motorcycle crash when I was maybe 4 months old, though obviously there’s no memory there.)
I’m more used to pretty much everyone the dead person has ever known being obligated to at least make an appearance at the viewing, unless they’re half-dead themselves. Usually a little bit smaller crowd for the actual funeral service, though not necessarily by much. Also closer to what that friend would expect.
That conversation didn’t go around to how people talk about death and people who have died, but I would be surprised if there weren’t also some significant differences in social conventions there.
It is pretty interesting, just how much attitudes and conventions can vary depending on the culture. Definitely including around death and dying. I can’t help but favor some more matter-of-fact approaches, which isn’t that surprising considering.
Death Culture in a lot of the US is so depressing and isolating. I know this doesn’t speak to every culture’s tradition and experience bc there are so many people and cultures in the country, but largely this is what I see.
People afraid of death. Not of dying, but of the concept and precense of death.
When someone dies, it’s spoken about very quietly and very privately, almost like it should be a secret.
Viewings and funerals have sanitized atmospheres, where you walk into a funeral home and very quietly tell the nearest family member that you’re sorry, and they say thank you, and you leave quickly, just as quietly.
People don’t explain death to their children, or they even hide it (replacing dead pets with identical ones, usually with fish or hamsters).
Worst of all, when the process is all over, when the body is in the ground or an urn, people stop talking about the person as if their memory is a taboo.
It has been eight years since my dad died. Eight. And people still avoid bringing him up around me. Sometimes they’ll even apologize if they mention him. If I meet someone new and mention he died, eight years ago, they say “oh I’m so sorry” and avoid saying anything ever again that may reference me having a dad.
It’s like when someone dies here, people want to pretend they never lived.
I’ve never understood this sort of culture, because on my mom’s side, we’ve always been super open about death. When a family member dies, we stand up by their body at the wake and tell lively stories about them. People laugh loudly and cry freely and share the most noble and most hilariously embarrassing moments they hold dear to them with the person we lost.
At the house we eat all day, but we can never eat enough, because more and more people bring more and cook more. We drink, and we even play instruments and sing, and we tell more stories.
And we tell the children what death means. And we don’t stop talking about the person once they’re in the ground.
If I miss them, I can message a family member and share a memory and feel better again.
So it always astounds me when someone asks me about my parents, and the way I watch them absolutely clam up when I say my dad died when I was in high school. I see in their eyes the way they silently make a note to never bring him up again.
Of course, if I ASKED them not to, that’d be one thing.
But I can’t ignore that we live largely in a society where death is a secret thing. A scary and inappropriate topic that happens behind closed doors. A dirty fact of life that we deal with as quickly as possible and can’t wait to wash our hands of.
I think it makes it harder for everyone. I hate that I feel I can’t bring up my own father, who raised me for seventeen years, without making Polite Company visibly uncomfortable.
Death is part of life. It’s going to happen to all of us, and I’m grateful to know that when it eventually happens to me, my family will laugh and cry and sing and eat my favorite food and drink my favorite drinks and tell embarrassing stories about me and my memory will stay with them because they’ll never lock it away in some secret little drawer deemed impolite and scary and dark.
There are so many cultures that process death in much healthier ways, and I’m not saying we should take heir traditions, but I think we should follow their example.
As it is, death is an isolating experience. We need to start talking about it.
Death isn’t evil, or inherently bad, or mysterious. It just happens. And it hurts. And it’s hard and sad and difficult to navigate. But all of those things are better managed when we talk and remember.
I’m usually careful mentioning recent ones in case the person I’m talking to doesn’t want to break down just then, but that still ties into the whole “not publicly processing grief” thing
Oh of course! I respect that it’s painful to think about someone you just lost and that some people would prefer to not bring it up at the lunch buffet. I guess I’m getting more at the idea that if someone DOES want to talk about someone they lost, other people act uncomfortable and overly careful and often actually make the person who experienced the loss feel like they shouldn’t bring it up anymore for the sake of their company.
When my dad died, I talked about him all the time and made jokes. One day one of my classmates caught me crying about it and said “I just didn’t think you were ever that upset about it……”
It’s like there’s a grief stencil we’re supposed to follow to appear like we’re processing loss in a way that’s appropriate and won’t offend anyone else, and I’m not a fan of the model.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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