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#5176

Post by neonzx »

Greatgrey wrote: Sun Mar 19, 2023 6:42 pm But I noticed the goal has moved to $3000, I’m gonna have to ask Casey if she did that or did GoFundMe do that automatically.

In any case,
The goal moved was moved to $5,000 GoFundMe does doesn't do that to my knowledge.

:?
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#5177

Post by RTH10260 »

does doesn't

YES!
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#5178

Post by Greatgrey »

neonzx wrote: Sun Mar 19, 2023 8:13 pm
Greatgrey wrote: Sun Mar 19, 2023 6:42 pm But I noticed the goal has moved to $3000, I’m gonna have to ask Casey if she did that or did GoFundMe do that automatically.

In any case,
The goal moved was moved to $5,000 GoFundMe does doesn't do that to my knowledge.

:?
Looks like she took Phoenix520’s advice.

I’d rather she fall short of her new goal but still have enough to cover things than meet the goal but come up short.
What's the Frequency, Kenneth?
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#5179

Post by Phoenix520 »

It takes a village. :lovestruck:
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#5180

Post by neonzx »

Phoenix520 wrote: Sun Mar 19, 2023 9:36 pm It takes a village. :lovestruck:
...to raise a child.

One of the best lines ever written in literature. *hugs*
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#5181

Post by Greatgrey »

Frater I*I wrote: Sun Mar 19, 2023 8:03 pm
Greatgrey wrote: Sun Mar 19, 2023 7:35 pm
Phoenix520 wrote: Sun Mar 19, 2023 6:46 pm
I hope she did it herself. Seems low. I’d suggest 5k. Expect the unexpected expenses. Sounds like they’ve been fighting for a while. :bighug:
Casey raised the goal herself. Said she grossly underestimated the cost of planes, rental cars & hotels.

Took your advice and told her to go for 5. :biggrin:
Looks like I'll be sending another bill their way on payday.
You’re good Frater. :thumbsup:
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#5182

Post by Foggy »

Greatgrey wrote: Sun Mar 19, 2023 6:42 pm In any case,

THANK YOU EVERYONE
I'm not done. I made a contribution, but I said I would add whatever is currently in the Fogbow PayPal account (the one that's connected to the Donations button at the top of the page), but it's been a bizzy week 'cuz I'm getting ready for surgery mañana and I haven't gotten to it yet. I have no idea what's in there, but it won’t be zero.
Edit: Okay, now I'm done. Hoping for the best!
Some things are simply too fast, or too relentless to avoid. Like the North Carolina rain.

Or the future.
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#5183

Post by RTH10260 »

The US police state
Investment fund links to Atlanta police and ‘Cop City’ project revealed
Exclusive: Roark Capital and Silver Lake Management showed to have a web of connections to the Atlanta police foundation

Nina Lakhani
Wed 22 Mar 2023 10.00 GMT

A new investigation has uncovered connections between private equity firms and the contentious development of a sprawling police and fire service training complex in Atlanta known as “Cop City” and the police force which fatally shot an environmental activist.

Private equity refers to an opaque form of financing away from public markets in which funds and investors manage money for wealthy individuals and institutional investors such as university endowments and state employee pension funds.

Research shared exclusively with the Guardian details links between Roark Capital, an Atlanta-based private equity firm which owns the country’s second-largest restaurant company, Inspire Brands, and a corporate backer of the Atlanta police foundation (APF).

Paul Brown, the CEO of Inspire Brands, whose portfolio includes fast food franchises Dunkin’, Baskin Robbins and Arby’s, sits on the board of trustees of the APF, which is raising $60m from corporate funders to build Cop City in the Atlanta forest previously earmarked for a public park.

Police foundations are nonprofits which raise private money from individual and corporate donors that is funnelled to police departments with little oversight or accountability. The APF has previously helped Atlanta police fund recruitment drives, surveillance cameras and Swat team equipment.

The police crackdown on community protests against Cop City have led to dozens of charges of domestic terrorism and the police killing of the environmental activist Manuel Paez Terán, known as “Tortuguita”. Police said Paez Terán shot at them first, but have not produced any body cam or other video footage of the shooting.

The APF has helped Atlanta become the most surveilled city in the US in large part thanks to a program called Operation Shield.



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... ty-project
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#5184

Post by RTH10260 »

Fast cars had always been a fascination ;)
Galloping Grant: the day a sitting president of the US was arrested
President Ulysses S Grant’s penchant for speeding in his horse-drawn carriage landed him in trouble with police in 1872

Martin Pengelly
Wed 22 Mar 2023 12.09 GMT

Donald Trump may be preparing to become the first US president to be criminally indicted but should his perp walk for paying hush money to a porn star come to pass – perhaps granting his reported wish to be seen handcuffed – he will not be the first president ever arrested.

In 1872, President Ulysses S Grant was nicked for speeding in his horse-drawn carriage.

The arrest of the 18th president, at the corner of 13th and M streets in Washington DC, was not for “a high crime, but it was – at least theoretically speaking – a misdemeanor”, the Washington Post reported.

Grant became president in 1869, four years after leading the Union armies to victory over the Confederacy in the civil war, the conflict which ended slavery in the US.

The policeman who arrested Grant was a Black civil war veteran, William H West. In 1908, West told his tale to the Washington Evening Star.

From his days as a cadet at the United States Military Academy, Grant was known as an excellent horseman.

Even as president, the Star said, he “loved nothing better than to sit behind a pair of spirited animals. He was a good driver, and sometimes ‘let them out’ to try their mettle.”

When he was stopped by West, the Star said, Grant “was driving a pair of fast steppers and he had some difficulty in halting them, but this he managed to do”.

The president asked: “Well, officer. What do you want with me?”

West said: “I want to inform you, Mr President, that you are violating the law by speeding along this street. Your fast driving, sir, has set the example for a lot of other gentlemen.”

Grant said sorry and left. The next day, however, he did it again.




https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... n-carriage
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#5185

Post by Dave from down under »

I've been spotted! ;)

https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2023- ... /102123726

Why 'fogbows', ghostly white rainbows, are such a rare treat to spot in Australia

Marlene Pointon is still pinching herself at the sheer joy of being in the right place at the right time to see her first fogbow and capture the fascinating phenomenon on camera.

Key points:
Fogbows form when sunlight interacts with much smaller water droplets contained in fog or mist, rather than rain
The weather phenomena are also known as ghost rainbows
While common in other parts of the world, fogbows are less common in Australia due to the country's close proximity to the equator and the angle of the sun

:snippity:
some nice photos in the article :)
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#5186

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

:biggrin:
"Mickey Mouse and I grew up together." - Ruthie Tompson, Disney animation checker and scene planner and one of the first women to become a member of the International Photographers Union in 1952.
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Post by RTH10260 »

Blood for money: my journey in the industry buying poor Americans’ plasma
The US is one of the few countries that allows donors – who are often struggling economically – to be paid for plasma

by Kathleen McLaughlin
Thu 23 Mar 2023 07.00 GMT

Iwas sitting in the bright sun watching a college football game next to my dad last fall, talking with him about the book I’d just finished writing and he’d just finished reading, several months before it would be released to the public.

“Are there really that many people who sell plasma?” he asked.

I paused for a minute and thought about it for what must have been the thousandth time. It was a central question that had puzzled me for years.

It’s a tale of Americans who sell their blood proteins to get by financially, and my own physical dependence on them (I need regular plasma injections to keep me healthy). It’s also a tale of a system that relies on economic precarity, a hidden part of the US economy shunted off in strip malls by the Dollar Store or relegated to the poorer sides of the tracks in major cities, in places often neglected and ignored.

By the roughest guess, working backward from the number of plasma units collected in a single year, you could surmise that up to 20 million people in the US donate or sell their blood plasma, the yellowish liquid protein component of blood, in a year.

The number stunned me then, but in the bigger picture, maybe it’s not that hard to believe. The business centered on Americans’ blood plasma is a hugely profitable one. In 2021, the global blood plasma industry was valued at $24bn. As one of only five countries – including Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany and Hungary – in the world that allows donors to be paid for their plasma, with a large and growing population of people on the economic ropes, the US has become a primary source provider of an essential bodily fluid that is spun into profit-making medicines.

More than 1,000 paid plasma centers thrive across the country, often concentrated in poorer zip codes and college towns, luring in donors with financial rewards of hundreds of dollars a month if they go twice a week, and keeping them hooked on the ability to supplement their incomes.

Millions of plasma donors represent a substantial portion of the US population, and yet we hear little about it as a segment of the American gig economy. There are scattered news stories here or there, of course, about plasma as staple of hard-luck life. There are the usual anecdotes of teachers selling their plasma during a strike or to make ends meet. We read that inflation might be driving more people to plasma centers around the country. And college students are always using this one particularly odd income stream for books, food and beer money. Still, we’ve failed to recognize how this endeavor – something that is often marginalized and maligned – is sewn into the very fabric of American society.



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -us-health
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Post by tek »

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/23/politics ... index.html
“For visitor visas, the median global interview appointment wait time is two months, half of what it was a year ago,” he said, but added that the wait times are lower “in most places.”
tell me you don't know what "median" is...
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#5189

Post by Azastan »

Since Frater asked...

Many years ago the USPS had an Air Mail Facility located at my local international airport. It was a 24 hour facility, which was extremely handy for people needing to get out a piece of express mail out THAT NIGHT.

I worked at this facility, as did my husband. The post office part of the facility was staffed by two clerks until about 10 pm, and then only one clerk was on duty until day shift arrived. The mailing part of the facility was directly connected with our plant facility, and the window clerk had a safe room as well.

My husband's duties included emptying the outside letter drop box for late night dispatches, around 10 pm. One night he went to collect the mail, and thought he saw someone lurking in the bushes, so he checked it out and found nothing.

What he didn't know was that the on duty window clerk saw someone suspicious in the bushes and immediately headed to the safe room and hit the panic button.

Within a minute, as my husband was still looking for the non-existent suspicious person in the bushes, the police for the airport arrived. My husband had a flashlight shone in his eyes and was ordered to come out with his hands up, with both responding officers keeping their firearms pointed at him. He convinced the officers that he was a legit postal employee and also someone who was authorized to be on the airfield since he had his ID with him.

In the meantime, the window clerk had called our facility's manager, saying that he, the window clerk, thought that an intruder had come into the lobby and jumped over the counter, which would allow an unauthorized person to gain direct access to the airfield from our dispatch bays.

The officers who were interviewing my husband bundled him into their squad car.

All of the rest of the employees--about 75 of us--were evacuated from the building. It was a cold and wet night in February, and we were not allowed to go to our vehicles because there were a few people unaccounted for, and it was thought that the 'intruder' might have taken them hostage, and everybody needed to be counted and verified. The police (from at least four or five responding agencies including the airfield's own police force, the police for the local city where the airfield is located, the neighbouring city's police force AND of course, our Postal Inspectors).

As we exited the building we were all told to keep our hands up above our heads, and because this was now about 10.15 pm, we too got to be blinded by flashlights in our eyes until we were examined and questioned. When we got past the flashlights we realized that we'd gone through a gauntlet of heavily armed police presence, including some rather ferocious looking AR-15 type firearms.

After about a half hour, pity was taken on us, and a couple of the buses used to ferry the airport employees from their satellite parking lot to the airport itself were commandeered so we could get out of the cold rain.

I was frantic at this point, because my husband was not to be found, and everyone thought he might have been taken hostage. Naturally, HE was worried because he, from the safety and warmth of the squad car, had no idea what was happening in the facility! Eventually all the police communicated with each other and relayed the message that my husband was safe with them.

But even though the building had been swept, the police still couldn't find two employees, so we sat on the buses for about another hour until the two missing employees woke up and came out of their cubby holes.

Eventually it was figured out that the window clerk had mistakenly thought that my husband was a prowler.

And that is why there is no longer a 24 hour facility at that international airport. In fact, the entire facility was closed, ostensibly due to security concerns.
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Post by Dave from down under »

Oohhh that is a story never to be forgotten ;)
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#5191

Post by neonzx »

Azastan wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 10:18 pm Since Frater asked...

Many years ago the USPS had an Air Mail Facility located at my local international airport. It was a 24 hour facility, which was extremely handy for people needing to get out a piece of express mail out THAT NIGHT.
:snippity: Wow crazy story. I remember rushing several times late evening to the airport USPS depot to get something that needed to get out... but never encountered anything like this.
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#5192

Post by Greatgrey »

What's the Frequency, Kenneth?
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#5193

Post by jcolvin2 »

Azastan wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 10:18 pm Since Frater asked...

Many years ago the USPS had an Air Mail Facility located at my local international airport. It was a 24 hour facility, which was extremely handy for people needing to get out a piece of express mail out THAT NIGHT.
If you were at the USPS facility at SeaTac in the 1990s, I probably ran into you. Prior to the days of electronic court access, most courts required physical delivery. The U.S. Tax Court is a national court located in Washington DC. As lawyers across the country needed to file pleadings with the court, the court allowed lawyers to file by mail, so long as it was deposited before midnight of the day of the deadline. My boss at the time operated on a "just in time" schedule, which meant that I was depositing documents at the SeaTac USPS office at 11:00 pm or later at least once every couple of months.
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#5194

Post by jcolvin2 »

Azastan wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 10:18 pm Since Frater asked...

Many years ago the USPS had an Air Mail Facility located at my local international airport. It was a 24 hour facility, which was extremely handy for people needing to get out a piece of express mail out THAT NIGHT.
If you were at the USPS facility at SeaTac in the 1990s, I probably ran into you. Prior to the days of electronic court access, most courts required physical delivery. The U.S. Tax Court is a national court located in Washington DC. As lawyers across the country needed to file pleadings with the court, the court allowed lawyers to file by mail, so long as it was deposited before midnight of the day of the deadline. My boss at the time operated on a "just in time" schedule, which meant that I was depositing documents at the SeaTac USPS office at 11:00 pm or later at least once every couple of months.
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#5195

Post by neonzx »

Athena? people name their kids this way and this is what happens??????

Is that vodka in those two cups. Likely.
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#5196

Post by Azastan »

jcolvin2 wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 11:35 pm
Azastan wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 10:18 pm Since Frater asked...

Many years ago the USPS had an Air Mail Facility located at my local international airport. It was a 24 hour facility, which was extremely handy for people needing to get out a piece of express mail out THAT NIGHT.
If you were at the USPS facility at SeaTac in the 1990s, I probably ran into you. Prior to the days of electronic court access, most courts required physical delivery. The U.S. Tax Court is a national court located in Washington DC. As lawyers across the country needed to file pleadings with the court, the court allowed lawyers to file by mail, so long as it was deposited before midnight of the day of the deadline. My boss at the time operated on a "just in time" schedule, which meant that I was depositing documents at the SeaTac USPS office at 11:00 pm or later at least once every couple of months.
I wasn't a window clerk at the facility, but the lead Registered Mail clerk. Our Red Room was directly behind the mailing part of the facility, so if you'd been able to peek back there, you would have seen me.

The evacuation was quite stressful, since not only did I not know where my husband was, but we had to leave the Registered Mail room without anyone in it, something we NEVER did, and I was responsible for all the accountable mail in there, including the several items in the vault which were over $200000 in value.
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Post by Azastan »

neonzx wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 11:42 pm
Athena? people name their kids this way and this is what happens??????

Is that vodka in those two cups. Likely.
Jello shots I suspect.

One of my neighbours has a son named Osiris, which I think is a pretty cool name, but definitely isn't going to be in a list of '100 most popular boy's names'.
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#5198

Post by neonzx »

Azastan wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 11:58 pm
neonzx wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 11:42 pm
Athena? people name their kids this way and this is what happens??????

Is that vodka in those two cups. Likely.
Jello shots I suspect.

One of my neighbours has a son named Osiris, which I think is a pretty cool name, but definitely isn't going to be in a list of '100 most popular boy's names'.
I like the name Osiris.

There are probably capped Jello shots in the pic because there is no food on the table. (not dipping sauce). But there are two cups without lids and I say those are vodka. Prove me wrong. (I've been in a bar before)
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#5199

Post by Azastan »

neonzx wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 12:06 am
I like the name Osiris.

There are probably capped Jello shots in the pic because there is no food on the table. (not dipping sauce). But there are two cups without lids and I say those are vodka. Prove me wrong. (I've been in a bar before)
I defer to your expertise since it's been about four decades since I was in a bar. The stuff in the open cups looks a bit murky for being vodka, though.
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#5200

Post by Kriselda Gray »

neonzx wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 11:42 pm
Athena? people name their kids this way and this is what happens??????

Is that vodka in those two cups. Likely.
What's wrong with Athena? I think is a really pretty name
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