Random stuff worth reading on the internet thread

[Jeff Lebowski]

Interesting article about prosecutorial misconduct in the Clark County DA's office that lead to the conviction of an innocent man. The two prosecutors in the 1992 case are now both district court judges.

https://www.propublica.org/article/a...dmitting-guilt

Ugh... Prosecutors can be evil bastards sometimes.

[falafel]

Interesting article about prosecutorial misconduct in the Clark County DA's office that lead to the conviction of an innocent man. The two prosecutors in the 1992 case are now both district court judges.

But there was evidence Steese had been 670 miles away at the time — and prosecutors in Las Vegas didn’t share it. The prosecutors went on to win seats as state district court judges, where they still sit. Steese went to prison for life with no possibility of parole. That would have remained his fate except that, somehow, in a life with few breaks, Steese finally caught one. Prodded by his original attorney, the federal public defender sent a team burrowing into the prosecution’s files and ultimately dismantled its case.

https://www.propublica.org/article/a...dmitting-guilt

[falafel]

One of the best articles I've read in awhile. The story of an American family keeping a Filipino servant (slave!) for generations.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...-story/524490/

That was a great article. The author, sadly, recently died as well.

[Art Vandelay]

One of the best articles I've read in awhile. The story of an American family keeping a Filipino servant (slave!) for generations.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...-story/524490/

She was 18 years old when my grandfather gave her to my mother as a gift, and when my family moved to the United States, we brought her with us. No other word but slave encompassed the life she lived. Her days began before everyone else woke and ended after we went to bed. She prepared three meals a day, cleaned the house, waited on my parents, and took care of my four siblings and me. My parents never paid her, and they scolded her constantly. She wasn’t kept in leg irons, but she might as well have been...

[Uncle Ted]

My boss at work had me read this article when it first came out. It's fascinating how some pretty smart people were able to piece everything together. There's a 1:3 chance of this disaster occurring in the next 50 years. And let's not get started on what a Mount Rainier eruption would do.

As I write this, my sister is moving to Seattle.

My daughter is moving to Seattle as well and will be working as a Geotechnical Engineer... There should be plenty of work for her.

[Bo Diddley]

As I write this, my sister is moving to Seattle.

Gorgeous area, but I'll never consider moving there because of this.

[wuapinmon]

My boss at work had me read this article when it first came out. It's fascinating how some pretty smart people were able to piece everything together. There's a 1:3 chance of this disaster occurring in the next 50 years. And let's not get started on what a Mount Rainier eruption would do.

As I write this, my sister is moving to Seattle.

[Bo Diddley]

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...really-big-one This article won a Pulitzer.

My boss at work had me read this article when it first came out. It's fascinating how some pretty smart people were able to piece everything together. There's a 1:3 chance of this disaster occurring in the next 50 years. And let's not get started on what a Mount Rainier eruption would do.

[Northwestcoug]

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...really-big-one This article won a Pulitzer.

Phew! I'm glad I'm on the east side of the Cascades!

[wuapinmon]

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...really-big-one This article won a Pulitzer.

The first sign that the Cascadia earthquake has begun will be a compressional wave, radiating outward from the fault line. Compressional waves are fast-moving, high-frequency waves, audible to dogs and certain other animals but experienced by humans only as a sudden jolt. They are not very harmful, but they are potentially very useful, since they travel fast enough to be detected by sensors thirty to ninety seconds ahead of other seismic waves. That is enough time for earthquake early-warning systems, such as those in use throughout Japan, to automatically perform a variety of lifesaving functions: shutting down railways and power plants, opening elevators and firehouse doors, alerting hospitals to halt surgeries, and triggering alarms so that the general public can take cover. The Pacific Northwest has no early-warning system. When the Cascadia earthquake begins, there will be, instead, a cacophony of barking dogs and a long, suspended, what-was-that moment before the surface waves arrive. Surface waves are slower, lower-frequency waves that move the ground both up and down and side to side: the shaking, starting in earnest.

[wuapinmon]

Heartbreaking story about the theology of homeless children in Miami:



http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/my...-miami-6393117

That article is fascinating. I only noticed at the end that it's 20 years old.

[Armenag]

Heartbreaking story about the theology of homeless children in Miami:

The secret stories say the angel army hides in a child's version of an ethereal Everglades: A clear river of cold, drinkable water winds among emerald palms and grass as soft as a bed. Gigantic alligators guard the compound, promptly eating the uninvited. Says Phatt: "But they take care of a dead child's spirit while he learns to fight. I never seen it, but yes! I know it's out there" -- he sweeps his hand past the collapsing row of seedy motels lining the street on which the shelter is located -- "and when I do good, it makes their fighting easier. I know it! I know!"

All the Miami shelter children who participated in this story were passionate in defending this myth. It is the most necessary fiction of the hopelessly abandoned -- that somewhere a distant, honorable troop is risking everything to come to the rescue, and that somehow your bravery counts.

. . .

Research by Harvard's Robert Coles indicates that children in crisis -- with a deathly ill parent or living in poverty -- often view God as a kind, empyrean doctor too swamped with emergencies to help. But homeless children are in straits so dire they see God as having simply disappeared. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam embrace the premise that good will triumph over evil in the end; in that respect, shelter tales are more bleakly sophisticated. "One thing I don't believe," says a seven-year-old who attends shelter chapels regularly, "is Judgment Day." Not one child could imagine a God with the strength to force evildoers to face some final reckoning. Yet even though they feel that wickedness may prevail, they want to be on the side of the angels.

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/my...-miami-6393117

[Northwestcoug]

~20,000 drug convictions in Massachusetts look like they will be dismissed, because they are all tied to a single fraudulent chemist:

https://news.vice.com/story/massachu...ence-for-years

Crazy. And, this isn't the first time in recent history that Massachusetts forensics has been in trouble.

[BigFatMeanie]

Not an article, but a book:

The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War

http://http://media.wix.com/ugd/0ad54b_02bd35303a0338ab8bb7526fd5b60c98.pdf

Absolutely riveting.

[Pelado]

"Confessions of a Catholic convert to capitalism"

http://www.americamagazine.org/polit...ert-capitalism