artisanscribbles

[artisanscribbles]

why is lake superior so dangerous? i cant find anything online that will give my access (not american!)

it's the largest freshwater lake on the planet by surface area, you could lose a couple of smaller countries in there and not even notice. (vs Europe)

on top of that, it's a Northern lake, so the water never really gets warmer than 50 F (10 C) even in the heat of summer, and it's famous for sudden violent storms that destroy ships and buildings alike. this thing has a MASSIVE body count because it's also a major shipping thoroughfare.

tldr it wants to eat you so so bad

[artisanscribbles]

What is very funny about being a specialist in juvenile law is that I never... actually liked children?

(Ok there is some possibility I am fooling myself about this, given that there has never been a single child client I got to know that I didn't love and root for and 100% support, but.)

I'm not a "kid person." I don't have the gift of running around and imagining with them. I babysat much less than equivalent older-millennial girls.

I just got into court, and I --

Okay, let me back up and talk about my first public defender's office. It was a rural office that covered several geographical jurisdictions, including multiple cities and counties, five total. Each of these had three courts that regularly needed to be covered: a juvenile/domestic court, a general court, and a slightly higher and fancier level of court. They all operated to varied schedules (general court A was on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but general court B was on Wednesdays and Fridays; juvenile court A was on Wednesdays and Fridays but juvenile court B was on Mondays and Wednesdays).

So, fifteen total "courts," and there were... hmm. 8-10 attorneys. And a boss who wanted us to be able to substitute for each other, and thus rotated us through the courts every month. On week 1, I might be doing general court A on Tuesday and general court B on Friday. On week 2, I might be doing general court A on Thursday and juvenile/domestic court A on Wednesday. I might have one day a month where I do general court C.

So on.

The court schedules cases not according to our schedules, but according to police officers. Do you see the problem yet?

Public defenders were fungible. For those who don't know that very academic-specific word, it means that we were exchangeable units. One case could go through four different attorney's hands because it would get continued, show up on someone else's date, get continued again, show up on someone else's date, and so on. Juvenile cases were particularly bad about this because they tended to linger in court for a long time, while the court monitored the juvenile's progress.

Here's another fun problem: the department in charge of things like child protection, custody, etc., would only come to court on Tuesdays. We did not have a spare attorney to cover an extra day on Tuesdays in which criminal cases would happen with children who happened to also have custody issues or a foster care prevention plan in place. They would put the criminal case on the next day, Wednesday. Effectively, this meant that we were not present for the decisions about where our clients went and what programs they would have to do.

So I'm dropped into this, a baby attorney, having watched a DVD about How To Juvenile Law. I feel my training is wildly inadequate, and I'm doing reviews on cases that have never had the same attorney twice. Zero trust between me and the kids, and why would there be?

I complained loudly until my boss gave in and ordered me the several-hundred-dollar Juvenile Practice In This State book, and then I read it cover to cover. I learned a bunch of really interesting things! Like all the stuff we'd been doing wrong!

My boss was shocked. "You actually read that?"

"What did you THINK I was gonna do?"

"Well, you're the juvenile expert now, I guess."

oh shit, I thought. oops. fuck.

But I leaned in, and not in the ambition way. I proposed a way to rearrange my schedule so that I would always be free on Tuesdays for DSS cases. Instantaneously, there was a change in the environment of the court -- before, it was the guardians ad litem, juvenile probation, and the attorney for DSS deciding what to do with kids. Now I was there. Making suggestions. And arguments.

We changed how we did the schedule, and how we put individual cases on that schedule. Keeping them on our days became a priority.

I instituted a weekly detention center visit, for myself. (I made it about half the time.)

I went to trainings. This area of law is wildly unpopular among a lot of public defenders, because it's complicated and sad and you don't get to do jury trials about it. Every new thing I learned just pissed me off. It wasn't that I liked kids. It was that kids deserved better. So I got to take over pretty much everything with regards to juvenile law in the office.

But like, I stumbled on this, I didn't know shit. I didn't have a passion for protecting children. It's just that every bit of law I learned made me go, "What? REALLY? Fuck off!"

[artisanscribbles]

[artisanscribbles]

The inevitable challenge when it comes to writing about folklore/mythology:

'Because of course this folklore is prevalent on the opposite side of the country. Of course it is.'

[artisanscribbles]

curious to hear y'all's suggestions for the worst possible pasta shape

(Assume that "pasta" needs to be made of sheets or strands of dough with enough surface area relative to thickness so that they can be cooked.)

[artisanscribbles]

[artisanscribbles]

I don't want power. I just object to idiots having power over me.

Right on, Cordelia. Right on.

Barrayar, Lois McMaster Bujold

[artisanscribbles]

It's fun reading writers who clearly grew up in suburban/urban environments as someone who grew up on a farm because they're always like "oh it was so creepy, woods at night, eerily breathtaking, something was living in there..." and it's like yeah that'll be the deer.

[artisanscribbles]

To the greatest irony- I turned out to be severely Vitamin D deficient (which was feeding a host of other problems) and taking 1 tablet containing a large dose does actually improve my health immensely.

My deepest darkest fantasy is that I collapse on the street and I am rushed to the hospital. They perform a bunch of tests and find out I am severely deficient in some kind of vitamin. Then I start taking the vitamin and I become the happiest cleverest person alive because all my problems were caused by this one deficiency

[artisanscribbles]

I always thought Miss Bingley's turn about the room thing was weird, until I started a 40 hour office job, cause yeah, right now I would love to take a turn about the room and not sit in front of the computer for 10 minutes...

[artisanscribbles]

This is a reminder for those who handmake Christmas presents that now is not too early to start. It may in fact be a good time to start if you have a lot to make/your craft takes a long time. You should maybe start it now, whether that's brainstorming or actually doing the crafts!

[artisanscribbles]

tbh every sentence in this screenshot is fucking killing me

[artisanscribbles]

i swear to god chatgbt "therapy" is going to be my actual breaking point

"god forbid people need 24/7 access to therapy to-"

THAT'S NOT THERAPY

THAT IS A PROGRAM DESIGNED TO TELL YOU WHAT IT THINKS YOU WANT TO HEAR

IT CANNOT PROVIDE YOU WITH THERAPY

*UNEARTHLY SCREECH OF DESPAIR*

[artisanscribbles]

cure of ra

[artisanscribbles]

Was listening to a podcast about the Sack of Rome in 1527 and found this amazing titbit about nuns fighting and managing to hold off german Lutheran mercenaries

"At the convent of Santa Rufina, the soldiers, who believed the nuns would be easy prey, were shocked to see the women defend themselves, first by dumping boiling water and oil from windows, and then by wielding cleavers, spits, and skewers in hand-to-hand combat. Those nuns were finally overwhelmed and killed by the soldiers, but they did stop the attackers long enough to allow the nuns from the nearby Santa Cosimata convent to escape."

Imagine being (at the time) one of the best mercenary forces in Europe and you get beaten by Sister Mary Margaret dual wielding a cleaver and a skewer

[artisanscribbles]

Read the original study here

"In total, the Ypres city accounts for 1488–1489 record 38 named women and numerous anonymous ones engaged in intelligence activities. Some, like Josine Hellebout, were highly active, receiving payments for up to eleven separate missions. Others appear only once but often undertook significant and risky journeys—on foot, unarmed, and often alone or in pairs.

A key advantage women had was their invisibility. Because they were not suspected of military or political activity, they could pass through city gates, enemy lines, and military encampments with less scrutiny than men. This phenomenon, Demets argues, was both practical and tactical: “Women could more easily move in and out of cities or around military camps, acting as trustworthy intermediaries between opposing sides.”

But these were not simply passive messengers. Many women were paid not just to carry letters, but to “to find out about the enemies’” or “ascertain the situation” in enemy-held territory. During the Siege of Ghent and subsequent campaigns in 1488, for instance, Tuenine Spepers was sent to Damme and Aardenburg to “gather news about the King of the Romans [Maximilian of Austria]” and to Diksmuide to report on the local situation. Other women, such as Crispine Sroys and Beatrice Cambiers, carried out missions directly to military commanders or towns under threat, often accompanied by unnamed female companions, possibly locals or other camp followers.

The growing professionalization of this network became particularly evident in 1489, when the war intensified. “By 1489, women increasingly emerged as professionals within the medieval intelligence service in Ypres, as records show that the same individuals were repeatedly paid a ‘salary’,” Demets explains."

[artisanscribbles]

you can go back to the past but nobody’s there