Good Things Friday (270) and Link Love
April 26, 2024
1. It’s been an incredibly hard week with Sera’s health. The kindness of friends knowing I wouldn’t be able to eat and making it a point to check up on me and send food has been deeply appreciated. I’m lucky that they care.
2. In the midst of all this loss and sadness, I have reconnected by text with two former colleagues that I liked a lot from my past jobs. One of them reminded me that one of the main tenets of Buddhism is that change is the only constant and we never have true control over most things (except our decisions). This in relation to both my job and Sera is poignant and it helps a little to remember that riding the waves is my job. That this isn’t my own personal failure whether at work or at home, that I couldn’t maintain stability there or here.
3. I’m just too tired to figure out why our backyard hose faucet spigot thingie started leaking and/or fix it so, for now, I stick the kids’ watering can sand toy under the drip and use that to water the plants. It’s not great but it makes me water regularly which I don’t tend to do.
America’s animal shelters are overwhelmed. Pets – and staff – are at breaking point. A staggering difference from the early pandemic years when shelters were empty. Between this, the pollution, etc, it’s hard not to think that we could have had a much better world if not for the drive to get back to the capitalist “normal.”
Oprah Winfrey and Dwayne Johnson pledged $10M for Maui wildfire survivors. They gave much more.
We really don’t have a justice system, we have a legal system that’s more broken than anything: Kansas prosecutor who framed innocent man surrenders law license, will soon be disbarred
Related: ‘Evilest White Woman on Earth’: The Criminal Injustice of Terra Morehead
Also related: A Criminal Injustice: How a City Ignored the Rape, Murder and Terrorism of Black Women for Four Decades
Pay to stay: Florida inmates charged for prison cells long after incarceration: It’s called “pay-to-stay”, charging inmates for their prison stay, like a hotel they were forced to book. Florida law says that cost, $50 a day, is based on the person’s sentence. Even if they are released early, paying for a cell they no longer occupy, and regardless of their ability to pay.
Not only can the state bill an inmate the $50 a day even after they are released, Florida can also impose a new bill on the next occupant of that bed, potentially allowing the state to double, triple, or quadruple charge for the same bed.
OHMYGOD about that Florida story. How can that be legal??? I guess it’s yet another example of a broken legal system, not a justice system, like you said a few lines higher up.
It is OUTRAGEOUS! Absolutely stunning that this is legal at all.