#“death with dignity”

[masterofd1saster]

CJ court watch Kenneth Eugene Smith execution

SCt declined on Thurs to stay the execution in Smith v. Hamm, 601 U. S. __ (2024). J. Sotomayor was incensed and dissented. J.J. Kagan and Jackson also dissented.

The issue was whether nitrogen hypoxia is a cruel and unusual method of execution. The state's response to his petition included

When Alabama scheduled Smith to be executed in 2022, he challenged the State’s lethal injection protocol. Nitrogen hypoxia would be preferable, Smith said, because he would “lose consciousness within seconds, and experience no pain or discomfort while dying within minutes.” DE39-1:¶86.1 On August 25, 2023, the State agreed to execute Smith by nitrogen hypoxia, not lethal injection, and moved to set a new execution date**** https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-6562/298749/20240125133540947_Oppo%20to%20Stay%20and%20BIO%20FINAL.pdf

***

***The execution process began at 7:53 p.m. CT Thursday, and Smith was pronounced dead at 8:25 p.m., according to Alabama Department of Corrections officials. Nitrogen flowed for about 15 minutes during the procedure, state corrections commissioner John Hamm said in a news conference. Smith, who was on a gurney, appeared conscious for “several minutes into the execution,” and “shook and writhed” for about two minutes after that, media witnesses said in a joint report. That was followed by several minutes of deep breathing before his breath began slowing “until it was no longer perceptible for media witnesses,” the media witnesses said. When asked at the news conference about Smith shaking at the beginning of the execution, Hamm said Smith appeared to be holding his breath “for as long as he could” and may have also “struggled against his restraints.” “There was some involuntary movement and some agonal breathing, so that was all expected and is in the side effects that we’ve seen and researched on nitrogen hypoxia,” Hamm said. “So nothing was out of the ordinary of what we were expecting.” Agonal breathing is an irregular, gasping breath pattern that can happen when someone is near death.*** https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/us/alabama-execution-nitrogen-what-we-know/index.html

+++

Blanke, C. (2017). Characterizing 18 years of the Death with Dignity Act in Oregon. JAMA Oncol. 3(10) reported >950 cases of physician assisted suicide in Oregon. Blanke found

Patients rarely remained unconscious for long periods; median time to death was 25 minutes, but the range was 1 minute to more than 4 days. The medications were relatively devoid of unexpected toxic effects. Vomiting was unusual (24 patients, 2.4%). Six patients awakened, giving the medications an efficacy rate of 99.4%.

Smith's death was right in the ball park for what you'd expect for "death with dignity."

[caesthoffe]

One of our siblings was murdered recently, and you need to know about it.

TW // transphobia and violence against trans people

Brianna Ghey was a 16-year-old trans girl from Warrington, England. On Saturday, February 11th 2023, Brianna was found dead on the side of a park with multiple stab wounds. Two 15-year-olds have been taken into custody in connection with her murder.

People in the Warrington area have alleged that Brianna was being bullied in school, and that neither the administration nor the police did anything.

Despite this, local police have said there is no evidence that the attack was hate-based and most news articles don't mention her status as a trans woman. This is deliberate. This is genocide by the hands of transphobes and TERFs.

Britain does not have gender self-identification (your legal gender being determined by how you identify and not any arbitrary medical requirements), meaning even in her death she will be deadnamed and misgendered on her death certificate.

She deserved so much better.

Mourn the dead, and fight like hell for the living.

EDIT: A verified GoFundMe has been set up for Brianna.

[knightofleo]

[bloomyblemy]

Ok what if…

what if the demons thought that lbh’s a husband snatcher?

listen ok so I’m pretty sure the demons know that LBH’s keeping a dead body in his room BUT they also know that the war god is fighting for said body right?

now I find it funny if they think that LBH just took LQG’s dead husband and the war god is trying to get him back.

there are opposing sides to this one on LQG’s (‘he literally stole the dead body of his husband!) vs LBH’s (‘ maybe THE WAR GOD killed his husband how could you know?!’)

[takofuus]

we talking about some sex update?

[the-daily-dreamer]

Dignified?

Dignified?!

DIGNIFIED?!?

I’m sorry when did getting killed in a battle or burnt to a crisp become a more dignified way to die? Has this fandom run so far with the notion that women are only valuable if they are masculine or fighters to the point that we find gruesome deaths in battle as a superior way for them to die?

Why must a woman be a warrior or a fighter to have value? Why must she seek power in traditionally masculine ways to be powerful and respected? Why does this fandom wish for all women to be the same cookie cutter, fighting girlboss lest she be titled a misogynistic pathetic trad wife? What is wrong with this fandom and their glorification of masculinity and violence and their continuous desire to have any soft, gentle, kind character be changed into a fighter or else they will ridicule and hate her?!

Helaena deserves far better than her book canon death. But she also deserves better than to die in a battle for a war she didn’t start that has already ruined her life in an unimaginably painful way.

[copperbadge]

I deal with death a lot in my job, because I work for a nonprofit that serves a population dealing with terminal illness; even with early diagnosis, which itself is rare, the average survival rate past diagnosis is about five years. I read a lot of obituaries on a weekly basis and I know when a donor passes because I'm part of the team that alters the database record to reflect when someone has died.

Usually the death is at arm's length, both because I've had practice with that and because I don't often know these people, I don't work directly with them the way doctors and fundraisers do. But we do encourage those who are able to participate in the activity of the nonprofit -- we have a program to fund support groups, we have patients and patient families on our board, and I work events and socials where they attend. So of the roughly thirty thousand people we serve, we're in close contact with perhaps five hundred, and of those I know maybe twenty personally.

This morning is the first time someone I've known personally, more than just to nod at during an event, had passed. I found out by accident; nobody has officially told us yet, but we started receiving gifts in her memory, and I get notifications of those automatically. We knew she was in hospice; I found out when confirming her death that she fortunately had access to a legal option to choose when to end her life, and she chose to do so on Wednesday night.

Dying from the disease is a fairly horrible way to die, so I'm glad she had that option and knew when it was time. She gave a lot of her time and energy to the organization and I'm glad she finally gets to rest. But fuck, it's rough to see her name in the "In Memory Of" field of the gift listings.

I wish I could say something like "Get screened!" or "Don't ignore these warning signs!" but this disease is idiopathic and incurable; there are treatments to prolong life, but when it comes for you, the clock starts. She had as much time as anyone gets post-diagnosis. She lived a life of purpose and was a kind person and that's all there is to be said, really.

[ace-and-ranty]

The thematic through lines between Spinning Silver and The Scholomance drive me absolutely insane. It is so fascinating, seeing themes resurface across an author's body of work.

You've got paying for things with honest hard work (mana, Magreta's hand-sewing), VS paying them with exploitation and other people's lives (malia, Chernobog's magic clothing). You've got mothers who set up their children as bet as possible (Gwen, Silvija) VS mothers who sold them for their own gains (Ophelia, Minartius' mother). You've got monsters of endless hunger (Mawmouths, Chernoborg). You've got all our righteously angry girlies (El, Miryem, Irina). And you've got people coming together as a circle (all the circle castings in the Scholomance, the Staryk King's capture)

It's also interesting of course to see where themes don't repeat. The Scholomance has a huge focus on collective action that's not very present in Spinning Silver. And Spinning Silver has a lot to say about personal dignity, about the "thousand tiny deaths" of seeing yourself ground down by abuse, which the Scholomance doesn't say much about. But just. GOD. The parallels.

[pnfc]

always gratifying watching s1 doof talk about how he wants perry to die....you absolute goober

[frownyalfred]

I need clark stuck in a room with a fatally injured bruce where neither of them can escape, and all clark can do is hold bruce in his arms and hope that someone comes soon to help them before the love of his life bleeds out in his arms

I always think about a war movie (I think it was Monuments Men?) where they talk about being gut shot, and how long it actually takes you to die despite being fatal. There was a guy who got shot and seemed fine at first, but he slowly died in a fellow soldier's arms over about 12 hours, I think? It was brutal. That's such a long time -- it isn't the dramatic passing out and death we see on movie screens usually. You can be be gutshot and take days to die, and it's hell for you and everyone around you.

[animentality]

I know everyone wants stories with happy endings, and they all hate when the main characters die, and insist well what's the point of the story then, it didn't matter at all! they died!

but.

I don't know. do the stories of those who die at the end not matter at all?

because if that's the case, I have news about the stories told by everyone who has ever lived in this world.

we all die at the end. we are all doomed by the narrative.

but our stories still matter.

[illmoraineakoi]

Do you guys think that when Dark was dying, he knew it, and became so overwhelmed by the visceral fear of his inevitable incoming death that he started desperately pleading to Alan to somehow come save him?

A forsaken creation, dying and agonized, desperately reaching out to his creator in a last ditch attempt at salvation.

A child, begging for it's parent's help, because they're scared and they don't want to die.

[crippled-peeper]

having your family members or ancestors bones stored at a museum or university to be gawked at by (mostly white) anthropologists for centuries and not even being given the OPTION to lay them to rest or give them dignity is perhaps the complete opposite of the CONSENSUAL and VOLUNTARY process of donating your body to science - to be a cadaver for medical students or to be studied for your medical conditions because that’s what you wanted to happen to your body.

I wish universities and their deans would gain 1 single shred of humility and sympathy and stop holding onto the body parts of marginalized and indigenous people at their schools against families wishes and calling it “science”

[sunderwight]

I love HOTD fic concepts where Lucaerys and Arrax accidentally kill Vhagar. I want more of them so bad.

Mostly because of the black comedy potential. I could go either way for whether or not Aemond dies too, but jesus that's such a great idea. The oldest, biggest, scariest dragon on the fucking planet and somehow sopping wet twink Lucaerys Velaryon and his tweenage mount manage to take her out? One little alteration and the tone of the whole conflict shifts almost entirely.

Of course some kind of freak intervention is required for it to work, and most of that's still pretty dark. Options I like include Vhagar actually just being so old that she's nearing the end of her lifespan and so it's less that Lucaerys and Arrax successfully kill her, and more that she just happens to die at the worst possible moment for Aemond, or else something like lightning from the active storm striking some of the chains on her (prospects also not good for Aemond with that one), or Arrax gets in a single lucky shot via breathing fire right down her throat and causing a fatal blowback of the whole firebreathing system that is like a 1 in a million chance type thing.

But then what? Everyone at Storm's End saw Aemond flip his shit at Luke and go chasing after him, plus Arrax is like snack-sized compared to Vhagar, you can't even plausibly lie and claim that somehow they instigated the conflict, not even with Luke's history of successfully landing critical hits against his uncle. Not that the "we're the victims" approach would necessarily do the Greens strict favors here, since Aemond's a grown man now and his side are hinging a lot of their cause on appealing to the same brand of Westerosi toxic masculinity that views losing a fight as a sign that the gods don't like you enough.

I haven't seen it yet but I also think it would be really funny if the Greens tried to paint Lucaerys as this like, unholy terror? Like they just have to exaggerate how horrible this one teenager is in order to salvage any shred of dignity from the situation. He is death from the skies! Tried to murder his uncle in cold blood when they were but babes! Thirsted for violence and slaughter ever since! The mad dog son acts at the behest of the evil false queen who spawned him, truly he is Maegor come again! A sinister bastard! And they're talking about this Disney Channel ass kid:

We can all hear the dramatic score from the show gradually distort into circus music in the back of our minds, right?

[daisyswift3]

🧩🍂🍁

Ok I could be completely wrong and seeing patterns that aren’t there (it wouldn’t be the first time) but I think Ed Sheeran and Sabrina Carpenter might come out tomorrow. I think they’re the next dominoes to cascade or FALL after Shawn Mendes. Let me explain

The 10th and 11th 🎃 messages -> Oct (10) and Nov (11) -> “the turn of the decade beFALLs the facade” -> “it was the end of a decade (the end of Oct or 10th month) but the start of an age” -> Change -> revolution/The Hunger Games ⚡️🏹😈🎯🔥 -> HALLOWEEN COSTUMES in the 11th 🎃 message -> Ed's gay little monkey meme costume and Elton John esque pfp (Goodbye Yellow Brick Road) and Sabrina's Tinkerbell costume 🧚 (Tinkerbell connects to the Peter Pan metaphor, growing up = coming out of the closet 🚪) (Sabrina is the one on the rollercoaster 🎢) -> Enchanted Forest and fairy wings 🧚 in 10th 🎃 message (OUT Of The Woods, “screaming color 🌈,” “somber woodland fairies”) -> “I hope your Halloween is enchanted” in 14th 🎃 message -> passing the torch/relay race/Paris Olympics/Nothing New, “she’ll know the way and then she’ll say she got the map from me” // “my bare hands paved their paths,” (x) -> Death with Dignity in Gracie’s playlists // Die With A Smile by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars // funerals 🖤 // my tears ricochet eras tour performance and visuals // Billie’s Hit Me Hard and Soft album cover which is her free falling out of a closet door and drowning in the deep end (the deep end in Gracie’s Risk and Under/Over, Lizzy’s Pushing It Down and Praying, “softer, harder, in between”, Gregory’s Mistakes, Guilty as Sin?, “you’ve made your bed now lie in it”) -> Castles Crumbling (PLURAL bc multiple artists’ castles are crumbling in this mass coming out, there’s an intentional ‘s typo which connects it to the “i’s” in the 14th 🎃 message and to all the other intentional glitches/errors) -> Lizzy’s All Falls Down -> Jump Then Fall -> Birds of a Feather/The Albatross -> 2nd 🎃 message -> Gregory’s The Fall and Before the Sun (55 mile signs and Gaga’s Smile being changed to sMILE on Spotify) (x) -> All Too Well (Sad Girl Autumn Version) bc autumn is FALL 🍂🍁 -> “autumn leaves FALLING DOWN like PIECES INTO PLACE” 🧩 -> “and all the pieces fall right into place” -> “and just like clockwork the dominoes cascaded in a line” -> Gracie’s Cool, “I'm actin' bored, it's my right, after all the love that you bombed” -> “tick tick tick of love bombs” -> tick tick tick BOOM 🧨🌋🕰️ (TNT, the reticent volcano) -> going back to the Halloween costumes, Taylor was dressed as a squirrel and there was Project Acorn bc the mass coming out movement (The Story of Us/The Manuscript/the film) is “nuts” lol (x) -> Ed Sheeran’s insta having an acorn and 🍂 for his Autumn Variations album -> Run ft Ed Sheeran (the relay race metaphor) -> Red being a FALL 🍂🍁 album

I think this all ties into the election too hence all the red, white, and blue and 4th of July easter eggs lately 🇺🇸 (Gregory’s Before the Sun mentions the 4th of July). And I think that’s why Karlie (Miss Americana, KARma) wore the Kill Bill costume 👀 -> Better Than Revenge Spotify canvas and TSMWEL eras tour visuals -> shattering glass ceilings -> “The Mountain: ‘You can say I like girls or boys; So call it what you want, call it what you want’” in the anon message -> Coldplay’s iAAM (i Am A Mountain): “I got this feeling that the ceiling is for bursting through…I got this feeling I can summon up lightning…Everyone taking aim, Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain” -> “Dear reader when you aim at the devil make sure you don’t miss” ⚡️🏹😈🎯🔥 -> The Archer/Katniss

[eywaseclipse]

Just saw a tiktok comment say that Neteyam got everything stolen from him, including his last breath. And I had to sit in silence for a bit. Because wow.