Random stuff worth reading on the internet thread

[Topper]

Japanese speakers, please explain the use of no ni in this phrase. I thought yokatta meant something like "was good" and sometimes "is good." Renraku means contact but how does one know who is the subject and who is the object?

連絡してくれればよかったのに

[falafel]

Holy shit is right!

Reading that article is like a flood of anger and disillusionment that this happens. It's unbelievable that a criminal racket like that can occur.

Exactly the same way I felt. Especially with the way the "judge" acted.

[Northwestcoug]

Holy shit is right!

Reading that article is like a flood of anger and disillusionment that this happens. It's unbelievable that a criminal racket like that can occur.

[falafel]

No wonder retired folks in Nevada are stock piling automatic weapons and ammo.

Hmm, too soon.

[Uncle Ted]

This is a terrifying article about guardianships of the elderly. It focuses on the system in Las Vegas/Clark County, but there are problems like this in other places.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...e-their-rights

No wonder retired folks in Nevada are stock piling automatic weapons and ammo.

[Pelado]

That law is just FUBAR. Have to wonder if that Norheim dude was on the take.

[Flystripper]

Holy shit.


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[falafel]

This is a terrifying article about guardianships of the elderly. It focuses on the system in Las Vegas/Clark County, but there are problems like this in other places.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...e-their-rights

Rudy chatted with the nurse in the kitchen for twenty minutes, joking about marriage and laundry, until there was a knock at the door. A stocky woman with shiny black hair introduced herself as April Parks, the owner of the company A Private Professional Guardian. She was accompanied by three colleagues, who didn’t give their names. Parks told the Norths that she had an order from the Clark County Family Court to “remove” them from their home. She would be taking them to an assisted-living facility. “Go and gather your things,” she said.

Rennie began crying. “This is my home,” she said.

One of Parks’s colleagues said that if the Norths didn’t comply he would call the police. Rudy remembers thinking, You’re going to put my wife and me in jail for this? But he felt too confused to argue.
Parks drove a Pontiac G-6 convertible with a license plate that read “crtgrdn,” for “court guardian.” In the past twelve years, she had been a guardian for some four hundred wards of the court. Owing to age or disability, they had been deemed incompetent, a legal term that describes those who are unable to make reasoned choices about their lives or their property. As their guardian, Parks had the authority to manage their assets, and to choose where they lived, whom they associated with, and what medical treatment they received. They lost nearly all their civil rights.

Without realizing it, the Norths had become temporary wards of the court. Parks had filed an emergency ex-parte petition, which provides an exception to the rule that both parties must be notified of any argument before a judge. She had alleged that the Norths posed a “substantial risk for mismanagement of medications, financial loss and physical harm.” She submitted a brief letter from a physician’s assistant, whom Rennie had seen once, stating that “the patient’s husband can no longer effectively take care of the patient at home as his dementia is progressing.” She also submitted a letter from one of Rudy’s doctors, who described him as “confused and agitated.”

Rudy and Rennie had not undergone any cognitive assessments. They had never received a diagnosis of dementia. In addition to Freud, Rudy was working his way through Nietzsche and Plato. Rennie read romance novels.

Parks told the Norths that if they didn’t come willingly an ambulance would take them to the facility, a place she described as a “respite.” Still crying, Rennie put cosmetics and some clothes into a suitcase. She packed so quickly that she forgot her cell phone and Rudy’s hearing aid. After thirty-five minutes, Parks’s assistant led the Norths to her car. When a neighbor asked what was happening, Rudy told him, “We’ll just be gone for a little bit.” He was too proud to draw attention to their predicament. “Just think of it as a mini-vacation,” he told Rennie.

When Belshe called Parks to ask for the court order, Parks told her that she was part of the “sandwich generation,” and that it would be too overwhelming for her to continue to care for her children and her parents at the same time. Parks billed her wards’ estates for each hour that she spent on their case; the court placed no limits on guardians’ fees, as long as they appeared “reasonable.” Later, when Belshe called again to express her anger, Parks charged the Norths twenty-four dollars for the eight-minute conversation. “I could not understand what the purpose of the call was other than she wanted me to know they had rights,” Parks wrote in a detailed invoice. “I terminated the phone call as she was very hostile and angry.”

[MartyFunkhouser]

Not sure if this is totally worth reading, but I enjoyed it. The A.V. Club argues that 1997 contained the worst 2 weeks ever for music. Smash Mouth, Sugar Ray and Limp Bizkit all dropped albums during that horrible span.

http://www.avclub.com/article/did-19...history-258568

It is both worth reading and they are right. Dear god how did that much terrible music come out in such a short period of time.

Also, I really appreciate the description of Limp Bizkit

And finally, it’s way, way too easy to rip on Limp Bizkit, so let’s do it. With its major-label debut Three Dollar Bill, Y’all, the musical manifestation of the state of Florida took the agitprop of Rage Against The Machine and the alienation of Korn and finally turned it into something backwards-ball-cap-rocking mooks could pound SoCo to while doing donuts in the Hardee’s parking lot. The proliferation of mouth-breathing rap-metal that Limp Bizkit’s popularity inspired, all the misogyny and violence and Woodstock riots it instigated, all the dumb fucking songs that were still yet to issue from Fred Durst’s mouth—there’s no need to reiterate it, especially when Durst said it best himself: “For years I looked into the crowd and saw a bunch of bullies and assholes who tortured me and ruined my life,” he told Rolling Stone in 2009, adding, “I don’t even listen to any type of music that’s like Limp Bizkit at all.” If only he’d come to this conclusion in 1997.

[Pelado]

I mostly agree, but I still love some Sugar Ray.

I like "Fly" and "All Star" even though they seem to think I shouldn't. Maybe I just didn't get the full brunt of the radio overplay since I was still on the Lord's errand when those were released.

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[falafel]

I mostly agree, but I still love some Sugar Ray.

[Joe Public]

Not sure if this is totally worth reading, but I enjoyed it. The A.V. Club argues that 1997 contained the worst 2 weeks ever for music. Smash Mouth, Sugar Ray and Limp Bizkit all dropped albums during that horrible span.

http://www.avclub.com/article/did-19...history-258568

I mostly agree, but I still love some Sugar Ray.

[falafel]

Not sure if this is totally worth reading, but I enjoyed it. The A.V. Club argues that 1997 contained the worst 2 weeks ever for music. Smash Mouth, Sugar Ray and Limp Bizkit all dropped albums during that horrible span.

http://www.avclub.com/article/did-19...history-258568

Contemporary critics used to say the same thing about Sugar Ray—that the funk-punk-alt-metal-lite-FM-pop mishmash the band produced was just too breezy and silly to hate, and besides, their self-deprecation negates all criticism anyway. But fuck that and fuck them: I will spread my wings right here and say that “Fly” is one of the worst songs to ever suffocate the radio, a pandering, Sublime-aping, reggaeton ragbag that spent the summer of ’97 sprawling across the national consciousness like a frat bro dripping his ultimate-frisbee ball sweat into your futon.

[Scott R Nelson]

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...ration/534198/

Read that yesterday. Was thinking of posting it here. I'm going to have to get my kids to read it and see if they'll limit how much my grandchildren use electronic devices, which is a lot right now.

[Katy Lied]

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...ration/534198/