2022 LC Thread—New Year, New Thread

the only winning move is not to play

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If I had a guest room, my mom and stepdad would stay with me when they come to town. That would be suboptimal. I like seeing them. But I need some alone time.

I could come up with a bunch of different ways to do it, depending on if you wanted to be more spooky or serious. I didn’t think it fit within your parameters of being easy and cheap, but I thought it was an interesting idea for people to run with.

You could do a vampire and Frankenstein Mary and Joseph a la the Munsters, with some zombie wisemen and creepy animals with a demon baby in the manger. Or you could make everyone a bunch of skeletons, maybe inspired by The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Just set up a mannequin opening a medical bill.

Then place various doll’s heads around the porch.

Maybe a red bulb in your porch light.

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The privacy invasion was vast when FBI agents drilled and pried their way into 1,400 safe-deposit boxes at the U.S. Private Vaults store in Beverly Hills.

They rummaged through personal belongings of a jazz saxophone player, an interior designer, a retired doctor, a flooring contractor, two Century City lawyers and hundreds of others.

Agents took photos and videos of pay stubs, password lists, credit cards, a prenuptial agreement, immigration and vaccination records, bank statements, heirlooms and a will, court records show. In one box, agents found cremated human remains.

Eighteen months later, newly unsealed court documents show that the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles got their warrant for that raid by misleading the judge who approved it.

They omitted from their warrant request a central part of the FBI’s plan: Permanent confiscation of everything inside every box containing at least $5,000 in cash or goods, a senior FBI agent recently testified.

JFC

Prosecutors demanded that the glass maker provide a sworn statement on when, why and from whom he received every dollar of the $340,000; the names of everyone who’d given him gifts since 2017; five years of tax returns for him and his wife, a doctor; and all of their bank and investment account numbers.

“Before proceeding too far down the road on this case, do you have a settlement offer to resolve this matter?” Assistant U.S. Atty. Victor Rodgers asked Tobi in an email six days later. “The government is prepared to be reasonable in connection with a resolution, and I think that an early settlement of this case would probably be beneficial to both parties.”

Nothing but a shakedown

Tobi refused to cut a deal. She asked U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi to “put a stop to the government’s abuse and overreach” by dismissing the complaint.

On March 9, nearly a year after the FBI seized the man’s cash and gold, Scarsi ordered the government to give it back.

Yes. IIRC the owners were running some rackets and the FBI knew that criminals were using some of the boxes. It was a super shady operation that also had regular customers. Rather than do the work to separate the criminals from the innocent, they just seized everything and put the onus on the innocent to prove it.

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if they found a murder weapon or like, a signed confession or something… that’s getting tossed in court right?

bc wtf

No - they had a warrant for everything. But the judge now says she was deceived about the FBI’s plan to permanently seize any cash over $5k.

Interesting string generated. Am I helping translate some text messages right now?

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They could just use the poor people from the metaverse who walk back and forth as NPC’s to do these translations when no one’s around. You don’t want to give them any down time or they’ll start thinking they’re entitled to breaks.

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(Superman post deleted. The poster was fake. Lame.)

Still funny.

Today is the closest Jupiter will be to the Earth for 60 years. Worth taking a look at it this evening.

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Heck yeah, Fat Bear Week is coming up. Looks like the minor league competition starts Thursday.

https://twitter.com/KatmaiNPS/status/1574429627933671424?s=20&t=5UaqUo3VOOSj4vfBldSc3A

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BRING ON THE CHONKY BOIS!!!

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A hundred years ago today, a US Senator from Georgia named Thomas Watson died.

Politically, he was a leader on the left in the 1890s, calling on poor whites and poor blacks to unite against the elites. After 1900, however, he shifted to nativist attacks on blacks and Catholics (and after 1914 on Jews).

It seems like Watson started out as a decent progressive/populist but eventually turned into a reactionary asshole, but I was still struck by the viciousness of this editorial published in the Youngstown (OH) Vindicator on the day of his death. I guess newspaper boards didn’t pull their punches back then.

I’m trying to imagine what mainstream papers would print if somebody like, say, Lindsey Graham (similar age) died suddenly. Whatever it would be, it wouldn’t be anything like this.

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Old-timey newspapers hit hard and I think the farther back you go the less restrained they were. They used to really go after Jefferson for his illegitimate children, IIRC.

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LOL