July 4, 1776 is known in history as the day of the American Declaration of Independence from the British Empire, an event that led to the birth of the United States as a sovereign entity. Today, July 4, is the day Americans celebrate their national values.

In 1776, the 13 American colonies declared their independence from the British Empire, an event that led to the birth of the United States as a sovereign entity.

But July 4 is not exactly the day the Continental Congress - made up of colony delegates - decided to declare independence, two days earlier, on July 2, 1776. Nor is the date on which the American Revolution broke out. which had begun a year before, in April, 1775.

Nor is it the date on which Thomas Jefferson - considered one of the "founding fathers" of the United States, who became the third president of the state (1801-1809) - wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, which happened in June 1776. This The Declaration of Independence was signed on August 2, 1776 and sent to the British in November of the same year.

On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress approved the final form of the Declaration of Independence, which was designed for several days.

Thus, this date became official, which was included in the Declaration of Independence, and the copy signed in August 1776, handwritten, can now be seen in the National Archives in Washington.

In the first 15-20 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Americans did not celebrate this date, and until the 1790s, it had become a controversial act. On the one hand, Republican Democrats admired the Declaration of Independence, and Jefferson, on the other, the Federalists considered the act too French and too anti-British.

In 1817, John Adams - the second president of the United States (1797-1801) - complained that America was not very interested in its past.

After the end of the American-British War, which broke out in 1812, the Federalist Party disintegrated and all political formations of the 1820s and 1830s considered themselves heirs of Jefferson and the Democratic Republicans. Printed copies of the Declaration of Independence began circulating again, with the date of July 4 underlined. The deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on July 4, 1826, helped to promote the idea that July 4 should be celebrated as an important date in American history.

The American Congress declared July 4 a national holiday in 1870, almost a century after the American Revolution. At the same time, it was declared a national holiday and Christmas, among others.

Today, July 4 is marked by the display of the American flag, political speeches, ceremonies, parades, parties, family reunions, picnics, baseball games, fireworks and other events.

On this occasion, on the American tables are most often found "hot dogs" and burgers, baked corn, lemonade, beer, watermelon and apple pie and ice cream.

Bemorepanda collected top fireworks photos.

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Some, after reading these stories, cannot sleep peacefully at night or are afraid to stay in the dark. So, be careful, because below we have selected some really scary stories. Reddit is the community where everyone shares their experiences, including great stories. Bemorepanda has collected the 10 most voted horror stories.

 

1."The man on my patio." by u/ByfelsDisciple

Upvotes: 29.0k

 

Warning: Long post, but I recommend you to read it all.

Ok, so this happened when I was around 9 years old (25 now) and It’s something I will never forget. It gives me goosebumps to this day.

 

I live in a terraced house (four houses combined) and my neighbors and I each have our own little patio. There’s a small road 10 meters from my yard where people do their Sunday walks and so on. Only a small fence separates my small yard and patio from that road. I live in a pretty crowded area, with several of these terraced houses spread around in my neighborhood, so seeing people walking on that road is pretty normal for me. Seeing random people standing on my patio is not.

 

When I was 9 I usually got home from school about an hour before my mom got home from work. I live maybe 50 meters away from school so my mom figured I was mature enough to be home alone for around an hour before she got home. This one day I got home from school. I did the usual thing which was to make sure I locked the front door, and double checked that the back door leading to the patio was also locked. (I was 9, being alone was a little scary even though it was in the middle of the day and only for one hour) I then rushed to my room upstairs to play as much PlayStation as possible before my mom came home and made me do homework.

 

While playing, I heard this noise coming from outside my window. (My room was located one floor over the patio, with a view to the road I told you about before) It was kinda like the sound of a cat. But my cat had been missing for over three months. Hope sparked and I thought “OMG, did he finally come back?!” I ran downstairs to check if it was my cat, but the sight that met me gives me goosebumps just writing this.

There was a guy standing on my patio. A tall guy with black hair covering half of his eyes, making him look like a male version of the ring women or something. I could hear him making high pitched sounds, almost like a cat meowing. A brown liquid was running down from his mouth, and I could see him spitting out my dads stomped cigarettes. He was actually eating from the ashtray. I was frozen observing this, eventually snapped out of it and screamed so loud that the man must have heard it. He didn’t react, he kept on eating from the ashtray.

 

I ran upstairs to my room, locked the door and called my mom who then called the cops. I’ve never been more terrified in my life. Laying in bed under my sheets, shivering with fear, as I hear these creepy high pitched noises from the guy eating cigarette stomps from the ashtray on my patio.

 

I kinda blacked out for a moment, because the next thing I remember is the police arriving on the road by my yard. I hear them talking to the guy saying stuff like “what are you doing?” “Get over here or we will come down and arrest you” and so on. He didn’t respond, but the high pitched sounds was more frequent and louder. I decided to look through the window, feeling safe now that the cops were there.

I could see two police officers standing by my fence, one man and a woman. I did not see the creepy man however, because he was standing directly one story under me and my field of view. The police jumped the fence, and I remember hearing the creepy guy screaming louder than anything I’ve ever heard before. He charged the female police officer with full force, and he fucking knocked her out cold.

 

The male officer then immediately tazed the guy, leaving him shaking on the ground, screaming still. The police man struggled to keep him on the ground while putting handcuffs on him, but eventually made it.

After a while he managed to wake up the female police officer, who seemed to be badly hurt. He called for backup and an ambulance, and then he sees me standing in the window above him. The expression on my face must have been something else, because he just looked at me and said “I sure as hell hope you didn’t see all that” I started to cry. By this time neighbors started to arrive wondering what the hell was going on. One of my neighbors, an elderly woman, made me come down and she took care of me until my mom came back home. The police took the creepy guy with them in the car and left. Before they left they promised to come back and talk to us about what had happened.

 

This is where the story takes an unexpected turn. The male police officer came back later that night and sat down with me and my mom to talk. He explained that the guy on my patio was actually diagnosed with severe autism. He had escaped a facility where mentally challenged people lived, located around 5 km from where I live. He explained that the guy had actually been living in my house 5 years ago but he had been forced to move when his mom, his only caretaker, died. The poor guy probably thought he would find his mom in my house. He missed the routines and he missed living there with his mom. The police had to move him from the house that time 5 years ago, because he was extremely strong (From what I heard he had extreme tensions in the body because of the autism, making his muscles grow stronger and stronger throughout the years) This was the reason he reacted the way he did when the police came this day. Still frightened I told the police officer that he needed to make sure this would never happen again. He promised it wouldn’t.

 

After a few sleepless nights my life got back to normal. The years went by and the guy didn’t come back. Until one year ago. At this time my mom and dad had moved out, I bought the house from them and I’m still living there today. I was enjoying my morning coffee on the patio when I see this random guy stopping on the road by my fence. He just stands there, looking at me. I look at him and give him a nod. And then I hear the high pitched noises. “Holy shit it’s him” his hair had turned grey but the high pitched sounds made me realize. My heart started racing and I instantly remembered the reason why he was back. I realized that he must have managed to escape again. Because I kept my cool a bit longer then when was 9, I started to realize how sorry I felt for the guy. 16 years later and he was back to look for his mom. I decided to carefully ask him if he wanted to come down to the patio. He instantly jumped the fence. I started to think he would knock me out like he did to that police officer. He didn’t. He smiled. He looked at me and smiled.

 

I offered him to sit down. He didn’t respond. I offered him to come inside. He started laughing. We went inside. His face lit up, pure joy. He was home. It reminded him of the life he had with his mom. It almost made me tear up. All of a sudden he sat down in my couch, turned on my tv and switched directly to the cartoons. I observed him for a while, he was just completely focused on the cartoons. I just wanted him to enjoy the moment so I didn’t say anything to him. I realized I had to call the facility to let them know. The caretakers arrived 10 minutes later. After a lot of convincing he got back up, crying, and they went back to the facility. I called the facility two days later. We made a deal.

 

His name is Tom, and I now consider Tom my friend. Every Sunday from the day he returned, Tom and his caretakers visit me to watch cartoons. They say it’s the highlight of his week. It makes my heart warm. Now, for several years my thoughts were “Let’s NOT meet, guy on my patio eating from the ashtray” now my thoughts are “Let’s meet every Sunday to watch cartoons, my friend Tom”

 

2."My brother saw a ghost as a kid. Two decades later, I realized what he actually saw." byu/florianizer

Upvotes: 20.2k

I was about 7 years old; my brother about 10. It was well past our bedtime when our mom woke up off the couch to put us to bed. Our dad worked construction out of town back then, so it was often just us three at the house for weeks at a time. Up the stairs and to the immediate right was our parents' bedroom. Going left put you in the middle of a hallway. Taking another left down that hallway led to my brother's room. The opposite end was my room which was also across the hall from our upstairs bathroom. At either end of the hallway are windowed doors we always kept locked and rarely used. The door on my end led to a balcony overlooking our front yard, and the door on my brother's end opened to our back porch (the house kinda leans into a small hill).

 

My brother and mom both had a habit of waking up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. I only knew this because I was always a light sleeper and they just couldn't help flushing with the door wide open. This night, however, my brother stopped on his way to his room and came back towards the bathroom, "I'm gonna try to pee before I go to bed. The past few nights I've been too afraid to walk to the bathroom. I keep seeing a man wearing stripes at the end of the hallway.". I don't know if my mom wrote it off as my brother telling ghost stories to try to scare me or if she was already half asleep and didn't catch it, but she didn't react at all to my brother's confession. I, on the other hand, was terrified by it. The fear of seeing a ghost like that at the end of the hallway or through the windows is the reason I started running from the stairs to my bedroom at night.

 

Years later, when I was about 18, my mom and I were having a conversation in her car about a dog we had for a very short time when I was little. We were sharing stories about Max's tendency towards destroying my shoes and other unruly behaviors when my mom blurted out, "Do you remember that time I opened the front door for the cops and Max ran inside to the kitchen and started tearing open that big bag of dog food we had?". This really caught me by surprise, because in all the years I lived in that house we never once called the cops (gun owner family in a quiet, rural WV neighborhood, etc.).

 

I asked her what she was talking about and she looked equally surprised as if she had just revealed something by accident. "Oh, that's right! I never told you because you were too young at the time. One night, I woke up hearing noises outside my window and when I looked I saw a man staring into my bedroom.". She went on to describe how turning on the lights caused him to take off running and how she grabbed my dad's pistol before calling the cops. "I can't remember all the details I gave them when they showed up... tall white male, wearing a striped shirt and jeans, short dark hair... something like that. They said it matched the description of a man they were looking for in the area. It turns out he had escaped from jail on a murder charge."

 

Now, I know it sounds so obvious hearing those two stories back to back, but it wasn't until a few years ago, in my mid-twenties, that I pieced together that my brother had unknowingly warned us about a murderer who spent multiple nights casing our home.

 

3."I survived a mass shooting at a movie theater." byu/Neon_Pikachu

Upvotes: 12.3k

This happened to me four years ago. It’s by far the most extreme and life threatening situation I’ve been in. The eyewitness account you are about to read is 100% true, and is mine.

 

For some understanding, this happened in the United States. It was the summer of 2012. My longtime boyfriend and I had recently gotten married. Even though we were dirt poor college students and lived in a dinky apartment, we were having a blast. That particular summer we gathered with our friends at the local movie theater almost every weekend. There was one just down the street from our apartment that had really cheap movie tickets. A night out that was under $10 was certainly within our budget! Anyway, one Thursday night I received a call from this group of friends inviting us to watch the midnight premiere of the newest Batman movie. I had just finished working a 12 hour shift and was pretty tired. I almost refused the invitation and thought of crashing in my apartment instead. However, I didn’t want to miss out on the fun, and it was a movie I'd wanted to see for a while anyway. Certainly it wouldn’t do any harm to stay up later than usual and miss a few hours of sleep, right?

 

At 10:30 PM we met at the theater. We passed large cardboard cut-outs of Catwoman and Batman as we walked inside, greeted by the smell of buttery popcorn and the chatter of excited movie goers. The ticket booth was to the right of the entrance, and just above that was an electronic list of movies being played. The 12:00 AM showing of the Dark Knight Rises was displayed up there in bright red letters. Being paranoid that the tickets would sell out quickly, one of my friends swung by earlier that day and purchased tickets for all of us. We bypassed the ticket line and went straight to the ticket taker. She smiled at us and kindly directed us to Theater 9, which was on the right side of the lobby.

 

If only I had known what I do now. That among the crowds a killer was lurking. That as I walked across that tacky red and purple carpet towards Theater 9, I could have been walking to my death. I think about it often now, what I would have done had I known. Pulled the fire alarm, called the police, screamed for people to run away....But, of course, I had no way of knowing what was about to happen. Oblivious to the peril I was putting myself in; I pushed open the doors for Theater 9 without giving it a second thought.

The hallway in this theater was shaped like a U and you could go either right or left. Theater 9 was the largest screening room in the building, perfect for accommodating the crowds that midnight premieres brought in. The screen was motionless and gray; not even the previews had started yet because there was still a good hour and a half to go until the movie actually started.

 

We entered on the right side, so all of the seats were to our left. I remember being surprised at just how packed the theater already was. Just about every seat was filled, much to our dismay. At first it seemed like we wouldn't find a spot to sit together. Now, the way this theater was set up, there was a section of seats right in front of the screen. This area was flat, and there were about five rows of seating in this section. A lot of seats in that section were empty, but sitting right in front of the movie screen sucks and none of us wanted to sit there. One of my friends then spotted a row with five empty seats all next to each other, perfect for the amount of people we had. These seats were about 3-4 rows up from where the seating rows start to elevate. We ran up the stairs before someone could take the seats and filed in. My husband, Brock, sat in the 5th seat. I sat next to him, and my friend Samantha sat next to me on my right side. Her boyfriend, Tommy, sat next to her, and another friend named Leo sat in the aisle seat.

 

We spent the next several minutes casually chatting, joking around, and laughing. After a while my three friends went to the lobby to buy drinks and that addicting movie theater popcorn. While they were gone, Brock and I passed the time by people watching. The theater was bright since the lights weren’t dimmed yet, and I could see everyone clearly. There were a lot of people dressed in Batman T-shirts and hoodies. One person even had a mask and one of those shirts with an attached cape. There were a lot of kids in attendance as well, which wasn’t surprising because, even though it was a Thursday night, it was summer vacation so that meant no school the next day. Of all the people I saw, the person I will never forget was the little girl sitting in our same row a few chairs away. She was really cute, blond with blue eyes, and passed us several times on her way to the lobby, each time coming back with various snacks and popcorn. Overall, people seemed very excited to see the movie, and the room was filled with energy and laughter.

 

After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, the lights started to dim and the previews began. Just like every movie I've seen before, a quick animation flashed across the screen reminding us to get refreshments from the lobby (we were already devouring that popcorn like ravenous animals), to silence our cell phones, and to make sure we know where the emergency exits are. The animation had this ugly CGI cat in a tuxedo that was sitting in a movie theater. I casually glanced at the bright green emergency exit signs that were on the left and right sides of the movie screen.

 

I didn't think much of the reminder, like usual. After that, I only remember one preview for the Man of Steel, the others I’m not sure what they were about. When the movie started the theater erupted into cheering and clapping. The title of the movie, The Dark Knight Rises, exploded onto the screen. This was followed by the scene where Bane is hijacking a plane. I thought this scene was pretty cool and it caught my interest right away. Only when the movie started to get a little less interesting did I remember just how tired I was. I decided I would close my eyes at the more boring parts to get a little bit of rest. I had been awake for 20 hours at that point, so I was rightfully sleepy. My eyes were closed for most of the duration of Batman and Catwoman’s encounter. I don’t really remember what was going on in that part of the movie (perhaps some of you have seen it and know what I’m talking about.) Anyway, when I opened my eyes again Bruce Wayne was on his computer digging up information on Catwoman. This is the last scene I saw. I never got to watch the rest of the movie.

 

All of a sudden, a loud BANG erupted from the left side of the theater. I sort of screamed a little because it startled me. A strange smell started to fill the auditorium. It was like the smell of a firework, so I thought it was a cherry bomb or something similar. Had someone thrown fireworks into the crowd as a prank? Then, down near the right sight of the movie screen, the dark silhouette of a person caught my attention. They were just a black frame against the bright movie screen. A series of flashing lights was coming from this person. It was a weird moment where time literally slowed down and everything went strangely quiet. I was completely frozen, unable to move and really unable to think at all. It was like my brain had stopped working entirely.

 

Brock caught on immediately to what was happening and he grabbed me. He pulled me to the ground and lay on top of me, shielding me with his own body. At this point time and sound returned to me. I could hear the gunshots ringing out across the theater. People were screaming. The movie was still playing on top of it all, creating a chaotic explosion of sound. I realized the flashing lights I had seen were bullets flying out of a gun barrel. An instant sensation of adrenaline flooded my body. There was absolutely nothing I could do except lay there and hope to God that the bullets I heard ripping through seats and walls wouldn’t go through me, too. At one point shrapnel hit my head, cutting off a good chunk of my hair, and as I reached for the spot to make sure it wasn’t bleeding hot pieces of metal fell into my hand.

 

I was lying face up, so I could see everything that was happening. The lights from a still-playing movie danced across the ceiling and walls. My friends were on the floor with me. Our unfinished bucket of popcorn was spilled all across the floor. Leo had his legs sticking out into the aisle because there wasn’t enough room for him to hide completely behind the seats. At some point Samantha's water bottle, which had been in the cup holder between our seats, exploded. Water splashed all over my face. The smell of gun smoke was overwhelming. Riot grade tear gas made me cry and caused me to cough uncontrollably. There was another smell, too; the horrible metallic smell of blood that I’ll never forget. I remember my lower body feeling wet all of a sudden. For some reason I thought this came from the leaking water bottle, but I soon realized this wasn’t the case.

 

All of a sudden things went strangely quiet. The bullets had stopped for some reason. Tommy shouted “LET’S GET OUT OF HERE!” We took advantage of the opportunity and made a run for it. We ran down the stairs, across the front of the screen towards a bright green EXIT sign. We crammed into a small, closet-like space where the door was. It was so dark we had a hard time finding it. We were screaming and slamming on the walls to find the door, blinded by the tear gas and dumbfounded by shock. Then, finally, my hands felt the metal door handle and I pushed against it with all my strength. The door flew open and the light of a nearby streetlight flooded our eyes. We pushed against the door so hard that we all fell over onto the concrete. Samantha lost her pink flip flops just outside this doorway.

 

As I scrambled to my feet and literally ran for my life, I realized my legs were red; absolutely soaked with blood. It was like I dipped my legs into a bath tub full of it. I checked my body all over and realized I wasn’t injured at all. Where had this blood come from? I looked behind me and realized that the blood was my husband’s. He had been shot in the leg. A massive, gaping hole had ripped through the lower half of Brock's right leg. His foot was barely hanging on and dangled lifelessly. Leo and a young man I didn’t recognize were carrying Brock because, after falling outside the door, he lost all his strength and he couldn’t walk. I was completely shocked. I had no idea he had been injured, especially since he was right behind me the whole time and managed to escape the theater all by himself. How he did it on one foot, I’ll never know.

 

At this point I screamed. My scream was so loud that it alerted nearby construction workers. At the back of the theater there was a narrow parking lot, followed by a grassy lawn and then the street beyond that. The construction workers were doing road repair on this street, but as soon as they heard my scream and saw us running they stopped working and watched what was going on. I’m not sure why this is such a vivid part of my memory. Anyway, they carried Brock along the back sidewalk all the way to the end, where the corner of the building is. This was quite a distance, several dozen feet. My husband then collapsed from exhaustion and pain, saying he couldn’t move anymore. He lay down and a puddle of blood started to form beneath him. I looked back, and realized we had left a trail of blood leading from the door all the way to our current position.

I was trembling. I knelt beside Brock and glanced around to see who else was injured. Tommy had been shot in the knee and the hip, and was further away in the parking lot. The teenager who helped my husband was also injured. His dad and mom were with him; his mom was sitting against the wall and looked like she was going to pass out. She was bleeding from several places. That family escaped at the same time we did. I guess they heard the bullets stop and decided to make a run for it, too. We were all lucky, because the shooting was still going on inside.

 

I had to take off my shirt and use it to stop the bleeding. I’ll never forget how lifeless and limp his leg felt, and I imagined that’s what a dead body must feel like. I got blood all over my hands and arms. The police showed up really, really fast. I’d say we were only outside for a minute or two before the red and blue sirens filled the night and rushed to our location (we were literally a block away from the police station). A female officer stood by us the whole time until paramedics arrived, which took a very long time.

Brock was one of the last to be taken to a hospital. He was bleeding out for almost twenty minutes before an ambulance pulled up on the same street with the road work. At this point he had become almost unresponsive and was on the verge of unconsciousness. Several massive guys rushed across the grass with a stretcher, loaded him onto it, and then ran with him back to the waiting ambulance. I wasn’t able to go with him because there was another injured person in the ambulance, and it was too crowded. I wandered around to the front of the theater alone, unsure of where my friends had went. My blood stained shirt and a pool of blood were left behind on the corner of that sidewalk.

 

Walking through the crowds felt like a dream. I couldn’t believe what just happened. People were in hysterics and crying. A lot of people such as me were covered in blood. And, like me, I’m pretty sure the blood staining their skin and clothes wasn’t their own. A lot of people seemed to notice how lonely and dazed I looked, so they kept me company and even offered me a ride to different hospitals to find Brock, because I hadn’t been told what hospital he was taken to. I hung around these people for a while as police swarmed the area and asked us what we saw inside the theater. The whole parking lot was on lockdown, and we weren’t going to be allowed to leave any time soon. It was around 2:00 AM, so it was very dark outside still (and I was pretty cold, wearing only an undershirt and shorts). The flashing red and blue lights of what seemed like 100 police cars were blinding. I remember seeing a big police vehicle pull up that said something like “Crime Scene Investigation Unit” on it. I think that’s when it really sank in and hit me. I started to get sick to my stomach and wanted to vomit, but somehow I was able to hold it back.

Eventually, police started letting people leave. I jumped into my truck and booked it out of there.

 

I was in such a panic that I didn't even think to go back to my apartment, grab my cell phone (which I had forgotten) and call my parents or someone else to help me! I was angry, upset, scared, and most of all still in a state of shock. Was I really going to lose Brock only a month shy of our first wedding anniversary because of some psychopath with a gun? Thankfully, by the time dawn rolled around I found the hospital he was treated in. This was in the next city over, maybe 45 minutes from the theater if you're going the speed limit. I was so happy to be there, and the hospital staff were all so welcoming and understanding. After making sure I wasn't injured as well, they let me wait in the ICU room that Brock would be placed in when he was done recovering from surgery. I was so glad he was alive. Brock and Tommy both had survived, though many others weren’t so lucky.

 

I found out the following day (after some much needed sleep on a hospital couch) that 12 people were killed in this shooting and over 70 were injured (I remember they first thought 15 people were killed, but the real number was 12). The little blond girl sitting in my row did not survive. She died in the theater no more than a few feet from us. She had been shot multiple times. A heart broken police officer, who cried during his court testimony, tried unsuccessfully to save her by carrying her out of the theater and having her sent to a hospital. Tommy was rushed to a different hospital in the back of a police car. He underwent surgery and made a full recovery. The bullet missed his hip bone and narrowly missed his urinary tract and bladder. According to the surgeons, my husband lost almost half his blood. Brock made it to the hospital just in time; any later and he would have died. He underwent several blood transfusions and was in the hospital for 21 days. The wound to his leg was severe enough that they had to amputate it after trying unsuccessfully to save it.

 

It’s been so long since the shooting happened that my husband, friends, and I have been able to recover from it somewhat. The event was pretty horrifying and has left us scarred for sure. I wouldn’t consider that part of the story to be creepy, though. No, the creepy part is the shooter himself. I later learned much about him from the murder trial that would follow in the coming years. Though my encounter with this man was very brief, he has affected my life greatly. Just to know that people like this exist…is disturbing. He is certainly one twisted individual that I never want to see again.

 

I learned everything from watching the televised trial that took place in early 2015. This guy was going to school for neuroscience or something in California. I guess he was a pretty smart guy. However, for some reason he had an obsession with killing people and had a stalker mentality. After dropping out of his university, he moved to my state and chose my local theater to commit a mass shooting. Before that, he was planning on hiding along remote hiking trails up in the mountains, jumping people, pulling them into the woods and killing them there, though he never went through with that idea. He stalked my theater for months and had this shooting all planned out for the night of July 20th. Though I never saw him before this, its unnerving to think this guy could have been watching us every time we went to the theater, and we would have never known it. We were completely unaware of what he had planned against us. This completely ruined my sense of security, because who knows what the stranger next to you is planning on doing to you.

 

I came very close to the shooter, but I never actually saw his face in person until I was forced to testify in court. Of course I saw his mug shots on television, but while in the theater I only saw him as a dark silhouette in the shadows, like a demonic figure rendered from the darkest and most sinister nightmare. He was even in the hallway that we passed upon running for the emergency exit. The only thing stopping him from killing us there and then was his jammed assault rifle. To commit this crime, he ordered a few thousand rounds of ammunition, riot gear and armor, tear gas, an assault rifle, and a shotgun. He took pictures of himself, which were shown in court, wearing all of this gear like some sick trophy and holding up these weapons with a menacing smile. He dyed his hair orange and put in these creepy black contacts while making devilish faces into his camera, something that made me sick just looking at. Before driving to the theater with all of this gear in his car, he booby trapped his entire apartment and set it to explode if anyone opened the door. Then, once at the theater, he posed as a movie goer and even bought a ticket for the movie. I think his ticket had Theater 8 on it, which was next door, but Theater 9 had more people in it so he went into number 9 instead. He was in the few front rows.

 

I must have passed him several times in the lobby while he was there. Maybe he had seen me, too. At some point during the movie, he got up and went through the side exit (which didn’t have an alarm for some reason), kept it propped open with something, then went to his car to put on all his armor and grabbed his weapons. Then, he came back inside and started shooting. When we escaped the theater, we ran past his white car which was parked right at the exit. We didn’t even notice it. At some point he came outside, and he would have seen us there on the concrete. I don’t know what stopped him from shooting people that were outside, too, but he could have easily ended us there and then if he wanted to.

 

I think the hardest part for me was facing this twisted individual in court. I’ll never forget rising as they called my name, walking down the center row past my family, other survivors, and crowds of news hungry media personnel. I sat right across from him, maybe only 10 feet away. While his orange hair was gone and he wasn’t wearing black contacts, being so close to him was a creepy and uncomfortable experience. My encounters with this man are certainly ones I will never forget. I can now say that I've come face to face with a true, deranged psychopath. He just had this blank stare in his eyes the whole time. If eyes truly are the windows to the soul, then his soul was filled with nothing but a cold indifference for those he had murdered and harmed. He wouldn’t even look at me. Sitting across from him in court was the second time I had knowingly been in the same room with this man. A man who had tried to take my life, but thankfully failed, a man who would end up spending forever behind bars when, at the end of it all, he was sentenced to 3,318 years in prison for his crimes.

 

This is to the man who tried to kill me. The man who has caused countless nightmares and fueled the fires of my paranoia. The man who hurt my friends and family, causing years of untold grief for my husband because he will never walk the same again. The man who stole the innocence and joy from a 6 year old child who went into that theater alive and came out dead. To the man who carried out the worst mass shooting in Colorado history, let’s not meet again. Ever. I hope you rot in prison.

(Edits: grammar and stuff. Also, I forgot to mention that Leo, Samantha, and I escaped without injury. A lot of people have asked, so I thought I'd mention that.

Thanks for all the support! I never expected so many people to read my story! Also, thanks to all you anonymous gold-givers :)

 

No, I will not be giving anymore information about my identity for obvious reason. I have provided proof to the moderators, and I don't think it's necessary to share that info with everyone else. I do have photos of my husband's injury, though I will not likely post them here for his privacy and for the graphic nature of the photo...)

 

4."Sociopath kidnapper in supermarket parking lot." byu/officefern007

Upvotes: 10.9k

My husband and I were at the supermarket and our baby was being especially fussy, so he took her for a quick drive, the motion of which usually calms her down.

 

It only took about ten minutes to settle her and I was still in the store (but was unsure how much longer I’d be and there’s poor cell reception inside) so he pulled back into the parking lot to wait for me. It was an unseasonably nice day, so he took her in her car seat to sit on one of the benches outside the store.

He took a business call and had just sat them down, absentmindedly rocking the carrier, when a woman (well dressed, mid thirties, average height, fit build) approached them.

 

It’s not uncommon for people to ask to play with our baby, she’s got big rosy cheeks, soft whisps of gold hair, and the most adorable gurgely toothless grin, especially when she’s deep into a good nap.

But her nap schedule is paramount, so my husband was preparing to tell the woman she actually couldn’t play with our baby right then.

She walked over right in their direction, brimming with nonchalant confidence, and before he can even finish his sentence explaining she was napping and not to be touched, she picked up the carrier and started walking off.

He was in shock for a minute, not fully believing someone would be ballsy enough to do something so sinister in plain daylight, so he said “excuse me, put her down” as his panic mounted.

 

She remained calm this entire time, but when he called after her she started walking away more briskly than when she’d approached. He ran full speed ahead tried to grapple the carrier out of her hands, finally resulting to restraining her arms.

This woman yells “HELP, HE’S TRYING TO TAKE MY BABY, KIDNAPPING, 911, HELP” kicking him in the shin and pulling a pink bottle of pepper spray out of her handbag.

Of course, no one in the parking lot was clocking the earlier interaction, and assumed he really was a kidnapper (a lone man in a Deadpool T-shirt versus a tiny well dressed woman.) Immediately a man knocked my husband to the ground and was holding him down.

 

He could hear bystanders encouraging the woman to file a police report but she was doing a very convincing job of acting shaken up and insisted she just wanted to get home. To make matters worse for my husband, she was driving a minivan.

He was in a raw state of panic, realizing the entire parking lot had banded together to inadvertently facilitate the kidnapping of our daughter. He was begging and pleading with them, but no one was listening. They just kept screaming at him that the jig was up and he needed to lie still and wait for police and stop terrorizing a young mother.

 

My husband finally had the novel idea to show them family pictures on his phone. But, too panicked to think clearly, this manifested as him shouting “I have pictures of the baby on my phone!”

Which, of course, everyone interpreted as him having either stalking photos, or worse, pornographic images of the baby.

It was at this point that a man, I can’t entirely blame the man considering what he thought was going on, kicked my husband as hard as he could in the ribs.

 

It was at this point I was coming out of the store and I thought he was being robbed by these people. I was yelling for security, so panicked my chest constricted and I could barely get any sound out. It was only then I realized he did not have our baby with him.

When I saw she was being held by a woman, I was relieved, I thought maybe the woman had intervened to move my daughter out of harms way while my husband was being robbed and was walking away to get help.

I couldn’t find a security guard outside the store so I ran up to the people holding my husband down, waving my wallet, pleading “Take everything you want, just let up and leave us alone.”

 

And one of the men holding him down said something like “Lady we need to wait for police to deal with him.” And I was so confused, why would the muggers have called the police? I just kept stammering “What do you mean, what are you talking about” and made out someone saying “He tried to abduct that woman’s kid” I did not understand and was sure I’d misheard him. My husband would never hurt a child. And we have four kids, if he were going to commit a crime, bringing home another kid would be at the bottom of his list. I kept trying to understand what the man was saying and suddenly, it all clicked.

 

I looked around for the woman who had the baby carrier and she was halfway across the parking lot. I went into total ballistic tiger-cub mode, literally leapt out of my heels, and sprinted across the parking lot. I’m not a UFC fighter, I’ve never even taken a self defense class, so all I could think to do was grab the woman by her hair and squeeze her throat with my other hand (which didn’t do much, she was getting away even as I grappled with her). Amazingly, none of the other bystanders had yet to connect that my husband was telling the truth and this woman was absconding with my baby.

 

I yanked on her hair as hard as I could and that was enough to make her drop the carrier. I was so scared and surprised that I actually just threw myself on top of the carrier, covering the entire thing like a blanket, and stayed that way without saying or doing anything else. The woman left. Not one person tried to stop her. Even though she was clearly leaving without the child she claimed was hers, which would be pretty damn incriminating if I’d watched this scene unfold.

 

Within the next couple minutes, police had arrived. After all that, there were still several bystanders who explained it as my husband trying to kidnap the baby.

The police, to my horror, assumed that she must not have had bad intentions. The first questions they asked me after getting her description weren’t investigative, they were questions thinly veiled trying to convince me not to pursue charges. Still placing blame on my husband.

 

A small sampling “Do your husband and the baby look dissimilar? Is there a chance she thought he was abducting the baby and she was trying to intervene?”

“Could your husband have been doing something inappropriate or violent to the baby that would make her feel compelled to extricate the baby from the situation?”

“Did she seem groggy or confused, could she have mistaken either of them for her own family members?”

 

They spent more time verifying that the baby was actually mine than they concerned themselves with the fact that the baby was not actually hers.

My husband had called his brother at that point who works in an office with a lot of lawyers and connected with one ASAP who gave us the priceless advice to get every officer’s name and badge number, to request copies of the store’s security tapes right away, and to escalate our complaint higher up the chain if these officers weren’t taking us seriously.

 

Finally, we had reason enough to believe we were being taken seriously, and we went home, and both just shook and cried until we had to get our other kids from school. My husband is seething with rage and grappling with a feeling of helplessness from how little he was able to do, and has two cracked ribs from when the man kicked him. (To the officers’ credit, they did ask if he’d like to press charges, but considering the man was genuinely convinced at the time that he was on the right side of intervening in a kidnapping and stayed to talk to police and apologized profusely when the truth became clear, he declined to press charges.) Amazingly, and frustratingly, there were still people who stuck around to talk to police who were giving my husband dirty looks and one man who even implored the police to involve CPS to verify it was really our baby.

 

Parking lot kidnapper (and parking lot skeptics), you better hope we don’t meet.

Edit: thank you very much for the premium and happy new year!

Edit: Thank you so much for the good and happy new year!!

Edit: After hearing from everyone and weighing the pros and cons we got in touch with the police and decided to move ahead with pressing charges against the two men involved in anything beyond basic restraint to set an example that these men made the wrong decisions, even if they did come from a well intentioned place. Thanks for weighing in. I am trying to reply to as many comments as possible, but if I don’t get to yours specifically, thank you sincerely!!

 

5."I (a pizza guy) intercepted a kidnapping during a delivery." byu/enoughpizzanow

Upvotes: 9.8k

I deliver pizza and I’d been having a really busy night, non-stop back and forth, without any time to even pause and take a leak.

I’d been so busy that I wasn’t really thinking about bathroom breaks. But we’re also going through a bit of a heat wave in our area, so I’ve been drinking copious amounts of water.

 

All of a sudden as I was driving to this particular delivery, the urge to go hit me. Like, things went from 0 to 60 in an instant. Thankfully I was close to the customer so could get this one over with quickly. Or so I thought.

 

I pulled up to the house, and it was an area I’d delivered in before, so I could immediately see that something wasn’t right. All the lights were off in the house, not even the glow of a television or anything. It was extra apparent because the streetlight closest to the door happened to be out of order. And on top of it all, the block was dead quiet.

 

This is a big university area, and obviously there aren’t many student renters in July, but there had to be at least one person, because someone ordered this pizza.

Maybe they just liked sitting in the dark or they were out back in the yard, whatever, I just didn’t want to get out of my car and knock on a quiet house in the middle of the night (around 9:30pm) without first checking that I had the correct address and the customer was inside.

It was scorching that night, even after sundown. My car’s A/C is a joke, and the piping hot pizzas don’t help things much, so I have to try and open the car door as infrequently as possible to keep any cool air in.

 

I called the number the customer provided and the voice on the other end said, kind of brusquely and out of breath, “Yah?” I just tried to keep it clear and concise, “Hey, it’s your pizza out front but there doesn’t appear to be anybody home?” And the customer replied, still gasping for air, “Yah, I’m not home.”

I had to pee so badly by that point that I was much less patient than I’d otherwise be with a customer right out of the gate, “Well, then we’re going to have to terminate the order, because I’ve arrived in the stated delivery window and you were supposed to pay in cash, so, I don’t know what to tell you. Plan ahead next time.”

 

I instantly regretted letting my bladder do the talking for me as the voice on the other end came through more clearly as a young, bubbly, and very distraught girl who couldn’t have been older than 20 or 25.

“Oh my gosh I’m so sorry I was running down the street so I could barely hear you!” She cried, “I just switched you out of my AirPods. Is that better? Sorry, I completely lost track of time at work, but I knew you were coming, that’s why I’m literally running home right now. Please don’t leave, I’m starving and I don’t have a car. Seriously, please don’t leave. Five minutes tops, ok?”

 

I know what it’s like to be hungry, and running late, and have no car but not live near any restaurants. Plus when I heard her voice I began to remember more specifically having delivered to this place a couple times before, and she’d always been perfectly nice. Now I felt bad for snapping at her. I tried to walk it back, while simultaneously looking out my window for potential spots to pee.

 

“No, no, my bad, I’m letting the heat get to me and it’s not your fault. No need to rush. See you when you get here.” I hung up and, while surveilling the street, was starting to think I was really out of luck.

All the other houses had people in them, and were close together, so there were no clumps of trees or out of the way patches of land or anything. Of course I had just tossed my empty water bottle at the last delivery, because I’m an idiot.

 

Finally, I decided it was escalating to the point of an emergency, and the safest bet was to use a bush in front of the woman’s house. She wasn’t home. The street light was out so no one would see me. The people who were home were inside. My car was parked across the street and we’re a small shop who don’t wear uniforms, so if someone did spot me, they’d have no way to connect me to my employer. Animals pee outside all the time, humans are animals... this is fine.

 

I scurried over to the tallest bush in her front yard. She didn’t really have much of a yard, more just a walkway lined with bushes and flowers that ran adjacent to her front door. The biggest cluster of bushes, the only one where I could be sure there would be no visible splatter on the side of the house, was about four feet from her door.

I looked both ways, unzipped, and let fly. After the initial millisecond of relief, I noticed the sound was way off, more like pissing on something solid than something leafy.

 

I started panicking, thinking I’d aimed wrong. But once I start, I can’t stop mid-stream, so I kept squinting into the darkness to see if maybe I was hitting a key rock or something and could just move a few inches over. Instead, all of a sudden, I heard a way more concerning noise. A deep voice exclaiming, “What the fuck?”

And before I could turn around, assuming I’d been caught by a neighbor, a man came leaping out of the bushes.

He blew by me, brushing my golden shower off him as did. He spit pretty emphatically on the ground, so I think I might’ve beaned him right in the face. I didn’t see where he went after a few paces but, though this next part is kind of a blur, I do think I remember hearing a car screech out from a bit further away after a minute.

 

I’d gotten some night vision by that point so I was able to make out his height, build, and outfit, but only the most general details of each.

I was in such shock that I didn’t even put my dick away. I just stood there trying to figure out what had happened. The reality was so terrifying that my mind refused to accept it, and impulsively searched for a reasonable explanation that could make everything ok.

 

I thought, “Could these bushes lead to some backyard area and just looked like they were against the house? Could they have been obscuring an open window?”

My inner voice was desperately screaming “Bruh that man was wearing a hoodie in 90 degree weather. That was a bad man. You’re in a bad situation.”

But the very idea that I was within inches of a guy who would be hiding in bushes at all, let alone in front of a young woman’s house at night, just wasn’t something I was ready to grapple with yet. I was coping by not coping.

 

My fight or flight response totally failed me at that point, because my dumb ass did the absolute last thing I should have done, and approached the bushes to try and validate this “There must have been a good reason for a man in a hoodie to be behind these bushes in the middle of the night.” theory.

So I walked over to the side, turned on my phone flashlight, and tried to peer around the line of shrubbery.

Pro tip, as scary as things may look in the dark, seeing them with a single beam of your flashlight can sometimes make it even worse. That’s when I saw the bag.

 

There was a tattered drawstring bag sitting behind the bushes. Slightly splashed with pee. But I was in such a moronic daze from shock that I groped around for it thinking “See? This is it, this will explain why he was back here.”

It explained it. Once I maneuvered it over and pulled it open I saw a sharp knife, a roll of duct tape, and a bottle of pills. The delusions officially broke at that point and all the adrenaline, endorphins, and self preservation instincts that had been suppressed kicked in ten times over.

I became whatever the opposite of dazed is. More laser focused than I have ever been in my life, with one singular goal: “Get back to my car.”

 

I dropped the bag, booked it across the street, got in my car, and slammed the pedal to the floor before the door was even all the way closed. I went as far as I could as fast as I could until I hit a red signal, then I pulled off to the side and realized I shouldn’t be driving anymore than necessary in the condition I was in.

 

I pulled into the parking lot of a 24 hour drug store and took a breath. I was finally calm and coherent enough to zip up and formulate a plan of action.

My first lucid thought was “Who do I call first, the police or the girl whose house that was?” I thought about it for what couldn’t have really been more than ten seconds, but felt like an hour, and decided “Ok. I am in my locked car with the engine running. If trouble starts, I can drive away. I know somethings up, she might not, she needs to know not to keep walking in that direction.” But as I was dialing her number, it occurred to me, “What if there was no girl?”

 

I thought I remembered delivering to that house before, but what if I was wrong? What if the girl on the phone was just a decoy to get me there to rob me, or worse?

Every pizza guy on the planet has seen the Evil Genius documentary by now, so I thought “She called me all out of breath. She wasn’t home. The whole thing was off, can’t risk it, I’ll start with the cops.”

I called 911, the operator was very helpful in keeping me calm, because I was a complete wreck by this point. He kept assuring me that someone would be there soon.

I kept telling them they had to get there before the girl did, but I was trying to express three thoughts at once, and really damaging my own credibility. It came out more as:

 

“You’ve got to save this girl because he wasn’t after me I was just delivering a pizza. Unless they were after me, in which case there might not be a girl, but I talked to one on the phone, so then you should find that girl because they used her to lure me there. But if she’s real she doesn’t know about the guy, who was also real, and there could be more guys if there’s actually a girl, and you know what? Even if there isn’t a girl there might actually be more guys. I only checked one part of the bushes so I don’t actually know. But we’ll know which guy is the one I saw because I pissed all over him, you know. I didn’t mean to, this was back when I thought the girl was real but not home, but she might be real so you really need to find her if she is because the guy was real—“

Finally they basically just asked me to stop talking and stay on the line. But that was when I saw an incoming call from the customer. I couldn’t answer it without disrupting my 911 call, so I just ignored it.

But then she sent me this text like, “Hey I’m here, don’t see you?” I told 911 she was there and they said officers were only minutes away. But who knows how long that meant? Especially after I’d given such a scattered account of the events in my panic.

 

I just felt overwhelmed with guilt. Because my rational mind said the odds of her being a decoy girl for some large scam targeting pizza guys were low and the odds of her being the intended victim of a predator were high.

So I put my 911 call on mute (where I can hear them but they can’t hear me) and turned back, heart absolutely pounding out of my chest, compulsively muttering “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” the entire way.

 

Then I took 911 off mute and told them I had returned to look for the girl. They weren’t happy about that, but I saw her meandering past the parked cars in the street looking to see if one was mine, and I waved her down, flashing my brights.

She bounced on over to the window of my car, happy-go-lucky. I figured that was a good sign that she wasn’t in on whatever this was. But I was just so scared to be back in the general area and to not know what had just happened or what was going to happen. I kept whispering “Get in. Get in!” And she was like, “Get it? Huh? Oh! You want me to get the pizza from the back?”

 

I didn’t want to make the same mistake with her that I had made with 911, so instead of trying to tell the whole story, I stuck to the bare basic facts. “There was a man in your bushes. I’m on the phone with the police. I don’t know where he is right now. Please get in the car so we can lock the doors.”

I was barely able to get even those sentences out, and I was shaking like I’d had 10 cups of black coffee. I held up my phone with 911 on the call screen to verify it for her. I thought that was why she got in the car with no further explanation, but it turns out that wasn’t entirely it.

“You still there? Is she with you? Are you safe? Is anyone else there?” 911 kept checking in, not knowing who the third party I was talking to was. I reassured them, and we drove, more cautiously this time, to a location 911 instructed us to wait at to speak with police after they cleared the area.

I didn’t actually have to do much after that. The police came pretty soon after, a police car met us, I gave a statement telling them everything I observed, and she went to go speak to more officers in more detail than they needed me for.

 

It turns out the reason she got right into a strange pizza guy’s car without probing any deeper into my story is because she knew who the man was right away from my description.

She had an abusive ex-boyfriend who was apparently psychotic enough that he immediately came to mind from hearing “There’s a guy in your bushes.”

She later called us to thank me and insist on leaving a huge tip. I wasn’t there when the call came in so the kid who answered didn’t know to refuse to accept the money. But the manager already promised the next time we see her we can load her up with enough “one free pie” cards to last a lifetime.

Easily the scariest thing that has ever happened to me, on the job or off. I don’t get the chance to tell the story much, because I try to avoid sharing it with anyone who could possibly know the girl or know of the event.

 

But I’m still not the same since. Even though I know he didn’t even have anything to do with me directly, this truly shook me to my core. So, man in the bushes, let’s not meet.

 

6."Had an incredibly frightening experience last night and wanted to know if anyone here has ever had a similar encounter." byu/sharkserrday

Upvotes: 8.5k

So last night, I was at a classmates house working on a group project we have due tomorrow. I live in an apartment in the town where our university is located and my classmate lives at his parents house which is in the foothills just outside of town. In order to get to the house, you have to drive along a relatively secluded and narrow two-lane road for about 5-6 miles.

 

We started working on the project at about 6 pm and I ended up hanging around for a while after we had finished our working. So I left his house pretty late at about 11 and started down the road back towards town. I didn't realize how tough it would be to navigate the road at night; there were no streetlights and the road was unkept and riddled with potholes. On top of this, I had no cell service so I had to drive very slowly to make sure I didn't blow out one of my tires since I had used my spare a couple of weeks back.

 

I figure I was about 3 miles from the house when I rounded a tight corner and saw a pickup truck with a camper shell parked diagonally across the road. The manner in which it was parked completely impeded my path and I couldn't drive around it because there was a gully on both sides of the road.

 

The only way for me to go at this point was backward, where there was a pulloff that I could use to turn my car around. At first I couldn't see inside the cab, but when I turned on my high beams I saw that there was a man slouched over in the drivers seat, his head resting against the steering wheel as if he had been knocked out after a bad accident. I immediately sensed something was wrong, the way his car had just "coincidentally" come to rest in a position that totally blocked the road was a big red flag for me. I had heard stories of people playing dead in the road as a way to lure unsuspecting people out of their cars so they could rob them.

 

I decided "fuck this shit" and elected to go back to my classmates house and explain what was going on. I threw the car into reverse and kept my eyes darting back and forth between my rearview and the truck. I looked and saw that I was almost to the pulloff where I could turn around. When I looked back, my heart skipped about five beats. The man who had been slouched over in the drivers seat was now walking at my car at a hurried pace while a few other men jumped out of the camper shell and started moving towards me as well.

 

I panicked and accelerated backwards into the pulloff, which messed up the undercarriage of my car pretty bad. As I put it into drive the guy was already at my passenger side door tugging on the handle which, thank the lord, was locked. I only caught a brief glimpse of him but his face appeared to be scabbed and leathery, definitely a meth head or some sort of drug abuser. I sped away and didn't slow down at all until I reached the house, constantly checking my rearview to see if they were following. Thankfully they didn't tail me, and when I reached the house I explained what had happened to my classmate and we called the cops. I was grateful that my buddies parents were kind enough to let me stay the night.

 

They didn't find anyone on the road matching the description but I filed an incident report and they told me they would be on the lookout for similar vehicles and suspicious activity. But holy shit, I'm still so shook up over it. I keep getting the same adrenaline rush I got when I saw the guy charging me whenever I think about it. Please share similar experiences you've had, as I would appreciate a good read or a good discussion to help clear my headspace!

 

7.“He asked for me by name?” “Yes.” “Call 911. I’ve never seen him in my life.” byu/ligamentary

Upvotes: 8.3k

I was watching my daughter’s kids while she and her husband go out of town.

They have a teenage daughter (let’s say her name is Alyssa.)

At like 3am I‘m woken up by a weird rustling sound and look out the window and see movement. I saw a boy emerge from the bushes on the side of the house. I saw a bike tossed on the lawn that definitely wasn’t ours.

 

My first thought was it was a burglar casing houses, but since he looked young and came through on a bike, I figured scaring him straight would be enough for him to decide to head home. Didn’t want to ruin a teenager’s life by calling the cops straightaway.

 

So I went out on the porch, flipped the lights on, and said “Can I help you?” In my classroom voice.

The guy looked surprised but not nervous. He was wearing a letterman style jacket, but once I got a clear view of him in the streetlights, he seemed much older than my granddaughter. Gruff. And more wirey than athletic.

 

He walked up closer to the house and said “Yah I’m looking for Alyssa.” I gave him a disapproving glare, hoping he’d realize he came looking for a girl late at night and a grumpy old person answered, it’s time to split.

 

I’m thinking what must’ve happened is Alyssa knew her parents were going out of town and maybe before she knew I’d be staying over told a secret older boyfriend to come over.

 

It was late and I was alone with several kids so I didn’t want him coming any closer to the house. I also thought it was weird he came so late and wanted to be sure Alyssa actually wanted to talk to him. So I said “I’m sorry. Who?” And he said Alyssa. You know, Alyssa Lastname. This is her house.” I thought, he knew her full name, they must be at least friends.

 

I said “you wait there.” He started to walk up and I felt a sick burning in my gut. Instinct kicked in. I yelled “NO. STOP. FREEZE” Then readjusted and said “You stay right there. This is private property don’t take a step closer. Wait. There.”

 

So I go in and Alyssa is asleep just one room over from where the rustling first occurred and I wake her up and say something to the affect of “I don’t know what the big idea was to have friends over this time of night but you tell them to go home.” She has no clue what I’m talking about.

I say “There’s a guy outside asking for you.” Confused, she gets up and goes to the window. She sees him and goes white as a sheet.

 

“He asked for me?” “Yah.” “By name?” “Yes.” “Call the police. I’ve never seen him in my life.”

I called 911 immediately, but as I was on the phone with them, Alyssa started tugging at my arm. “He’s coming up!” I had younger kids in the house to think about so I kept the door latched and pulled it just open enough for the latch and yelled “I asked my husband and none of us know an Alyssa Lastname. Leave my property or I’m calling 911.”

 

He got angry and started yelling for her to come out. Thankfully the police came pretty quickly and when he heard the sirens he grabbed the bike and ran off. I watched where he was running and he jumped into the passenger side of a car without headlights or front plates and sped off.

 

The police followed in the same direction once I pointed them. But they didn’t get him. They advised us to take all her social media details offline if she was sure she didn’t know this person and said they’d had a couple similar reports recently and were looking into it.

I got a heavy duty lock and she slept in my room for the remainder of my visit.

 

8."Someone broke into my house and tried to find me." by u/StaringVoid

Upvotes: 8.1k

A few years ago, I was renting a house in Northern California. The neighborhood was just outside the suburbs. It seemed like the perfect balance of having space and having nice neighbors close enough not to feel isolated. The area had no street lights, so it was very dark at night especially if there were clouds blocking the moonlight. It didn’t bother me though. It made my little house feel even more quaint on dark nights.

 

I got home from work one day in mid winter. It was a cloudy night, so pulling up to my house, I saw only what my headlights and front porch light illuminated. When I got out of my car, I caught a whiff of cigarette smoke. That was odd as I had never smelled that before around that house. I didn’t see anyone nearby, so I ignored it and went inside. I had just got off a shift with a few hours of overtime, so I felt pretty tired. Even though it wasn’t even 7 yet, I decided to take a shower and call it a night.

 

I woke up sometime later sure that I had heard a noise inside my house. I wasn’t worried right away because my friend would sometimes stop by to use my shower after work on his way to his night classes. I even gave him a spare key so he could stop by even if I wasn’t home. He would always text me to let me know beforehand though, and I hadn’t heard my phone go off.

 

I reached over to my bedside table and picked up my cell phone to see if my friend had sent me a text. The bright light from my phone’s screen and number pad blinded me. These were the days before phones had a light sensor that would dim the screen in the dark, and this particular phone was so bright I could use it as a flashlight. Through squinted eyes, I could make out that it was 9 something, but I couldn’t tell if I had an unread text or not.

 

I set my phone aside and called out my friend’s name. There were a couple of seconds of silence before I heard loud foot falls as someone started running through the bottom floor of my house. I leapt out of bed and ran to the closet. They were already up the stairs by the time I had opened the door and stepped inside.

 

That house had three rooms upstairs: two bedrooms on either side of the hallway, the one I was in and a spare, and a bathroom at the end. The bedroom doors were both closed, but the bathroom door was cracked open. I heard whoever was in my house thunder down the hallway past my door and into the bathroom. Thank god he did. That gave me enough time to open the attic access in the ceiling of my closet and hoist myself up.

 

I had just started to lift myself up when the person ran back out of the bathroom. My feet were barely inside of the attic when my bedroom door burst open. I heard footsteps run into my room and stop. When they didn’t see me in that room, they ran back to the hallway and into the other room which just had boxes stacked in a corner, some weights, and a table where I painted my miniature models. I guess they decided that if someone were hiding, it would be in the bedroom because they charged back into my room and turned on the light. A moment later the closet door was ripped open.

 

I was crouched in my attic just a foot or so away from the access, so I could try to stop them if they started to climb up. From my vantage point all I could see was from about their knee down. They were wearing dirty blue jeans with frayed cuffs and worn work boots. After a few seconds of looking in the closet, they stepped away and I heard a loud crash come from my room followed by a scream of frustration and anger. That scream was the most unnerving part of the incident for me. It reminded me far too much of my stepfather who would scream in a similar way when he lost his temper. He would eventually be put in a mental hospital for several mental disorders that resulted in erratic and violent tendencies.

 

The man in my house ran back down the stairs. I heard crashes and clatters as things were thrown around and furniture was knocked over. I stayed crouched in the attic. I had left my cell phone when I ran for the closet, and I wasn’t certain I could climb down without him hearing. After some time, the noises stopped. I started counting slowly. When I reached 1,000, I decided it was safe enough to climb down and call the police.

 

The first thing I noticed when I exited the closet was the intruder had flipped my bed over. I assume in an attempt to find me. That was the loud noise I had heard after he stepped away from the closet. I couldn’t find my cell phone, so I went to the land line by the bed and called the police. I waited in my room until I heard them call out from downstairs.

 

The first floor was a mess, but I had expected that. Chairs had been knocked over, the sofa had been flipped. All the books, pictures and knick knacks I had on my shelves were strewn across the floor. The cupboards in the kitchen had been opened and all the boxed and canned foods had been thrown to the ground. As far as I could tell though, the only thing missing was a single knife out of the wooden block in my kitchen.

 

The police checked the house from top to bottom. They found that the side door had been forced open by something like a crowbar. They also found a few cigarette butts along my fence line along with some foil and an empty pen tube which the police said people often use to smoke meth, so they think he had been watching my house for a while. I realized that he must have been out there smoking a cigarette when I got home. They collected up the ‘evidence’ and told me I should stay with family or friends that night and get that door fixed as soon as possible.

 

I opted to just not sleep. I moved a shelf over to block the broken door and spent the next couple hours cleaning things up. I would often go to the window with a flashlight and shine it along the fence line where the police found the cigarette butts and foil, but I didn’t see anything.

 

The next day I called to have the door fixed and motion lights installed at the back and sides of my house. I ran a phone cable up into the attic and added a landline. I never wanted to be stuck up there without a phone again. Nothing else happened at that house though. I lived there another three years without incident.

 

One more precaution I took was practicing getting out of my bed, going to my closet and climbing into the attic as quickly and quietly as possible. I even kept at it when I moved, except now I go to a crawl space at the back of the closet instead of the attic. I try not to think about what would have happened if I had been a bit slower getting to the attic or if he hadn’t gone into the bathroom at the end of the hall first.

 

9."Creepy dude in the pharmacy with a weird fetish." byu/Cygnus875

Upvotes: 7.4k

This happened maybe 10 years ago when I was in my early 30's. I was standing in line at the local pharmacy to get my prescriptions. This is a small town and I am a regular there, so they know me on sight. I was behind a couple of other people in line, and there were a couple of people behind me.

 

I kept feeling a tickle in my hair in the back of my head, but every time I looked behind me, the guy there was a few steps back and looking at the floor. This happened several times by the time I was at the front of the line. The pharmacist told me she wanted to talk to me about my medication in the consultation room they had at the time (since converted to a bathroom). I thought this was weird because we both knew I had been on this medication for years and would be for life. Nothing new.

 

I get back to the room and close the door, and she comes in from the door at the other side that leads from the pharmacy. She told me that the man behind me had been stepping forward, sticking his nose in my hair, and smelling, before stepping back and looking at the floor. This shook me pretty badly as this is such weird behavior, especially in my little town.

 

The pharmacy staff insisted on having me wait there until the guy was distracted (by another pharmacy employee), and they had a security guard walk me to my car and watch me drive off, to make sure I was gone before Hair Sniffer came out and saw what I was driving and what direction I was going.

I still use this pharmacy and some of the same people still work there. I will always be grateful that they took the initiative to make sure I was safe that day.

 

10."The one day I woke up late may have saved my life." by u/[deleted]

Upvotes: 6.3k

I've told this story in other places, on other accounts before, but it bears repeating.

One day, when I was an elementary schooler (I think probably 3rd or 4th grade), I was awoken by my mom in a rush. She had overslept, and since she always woke me up in the morning, this meant that I too overslept and now there was just no way I was gonna be ready for school early enough to get on the school bus.

 

IIRC, school started at 8 AM, and my bus pickup time was 7 AM, but it was already like 6:40 or something, and I was still in my pajamas and hadn't even had breakfast yet. So mom decided that today, we would just tell the bus driver to go on ahead and she would take me to school, which would give me plenty of time to get ready.

 

So I'm sitting there at the dining room table eating breakfast, still in my pajamas, and it's now about 6:50. We hear the bus pull up, about 10 minutes earlier than usual. My mom peeks her head out of the door, into the foggy morning and waves the bus on. She closes the door and comes back inside, but the bus doesn't pull away.

 

There's a knock at the door, and mom opens it to find a man in a bus driver uniform. He explains that he's a substitute driver, because the regular driver called in sick. He says he knows he's a few minutes early, since he wanted to get an early start on the route since he didn't know it well. Mom explains to him that she was gonna take me to school since we woke up late. He gets visibly upset, and says that he can wait a few minutes since he's already running ahead of schedule. My mom insists that no, I won't be ready to go in a few minutes, and tells him to go on ahead. He seemed angry about this, but turned around and got back in the bus and left.

 

I return to eating my breakfast, and still don't have my school clothes on at this point. But at 7:00 AM sharp, another bus pulls up to my house. Mom thinks this is weird and goes outside to talk to them. She comes back inside looking terrified, but doesn't really say anything about it and tells me to finish getting ready for school. At the time, I didn't know what happened, but mom would end up telling me a few years later.

 

When she went to this second bus, she found that it was being driven by my regular bus driver, and it was full of all the other kids that are usually on the route (the other bus was empty, by the way). Mom asks the driver about the substitute driver and about him calling in sick. "I never called in sick. There is no substitute driver on my route." he says.

 

The driver immediately called dispatch in a panic, and told my mom to go inside and call the police (which she did, without me knowing) and report this incident. There was absolutely no one doing my driver's route that day. Whoever this was, was most likely a kidnapper who had targeted me.

 

I never heard anything about it again. Not even if someone else had ended up being picked up by this mysterious fake bus driver. But chances are, had I gotten on that bus, I would have never made it to school, or back home. And if mom hadn't overslept on that specific day, I would have been on that bus.

Reddit is the place where you can find practically anything, and curiosities about everything in the world are definitely on this list.

 

This platform is difficult to fall into a certain category. However, in essence, it is a huge collection of forums, where you can find news, answers to questions or debate certain topics. Among all this, you can find all sorts of interesting things about the world around us.

 

So by giving an answer you can reach the top of the discussions. On Reddit, indeed, we found a multitude of surprising answers to more and more questions. Bemorepanda selected the most upvoted for you.

 

1.Right after Kobe Bryant's Death, reddit u/Panorama correctly detailed what happened. His analysis was confirmed a year later by the NTSB.

Upvotes: 14,8k

No, as a helicopter pilot I can explain this.

 

The aircraft was flying VFR, which means not on instruments. Helicopters are allowed to fly during daylight in the type of airspace he was operating in from John Wayne to the crash site in 1/2 mile visibility and clear of clouds. This is predicated on the pilot determining he is in fact flying in at least 1/2 mile visibility and clear of clouds. This is not easily done, because it can be difficult to tell whether your projected flight path will keep you out of the clouds and clouds are a kind of fuzzy looking beast in front of you, or hopefully above you, and it can be very difficult to assure you aren’t going to fly into a cloud or an area of reduced visibility up ahead. This is why you shouldn’t play with fire; just land, at an airport preferably or street, park, etc.

 

The altitude read outs you see on these radar tracks are what the transponder reports which is Pressure Altitude, the height above the 29.92” Hg standard datum plane. This is essentially above sea level under yesterday’s conditions. So, if the altitude readout says 1,400’ you could actually be on the ground if the elevation where you are is 1,400’. What would be great is an Above Ground Level (AGL) readout, which can be determined by comparing the flight path with topographical maps.

 

I am a pilot who flies in Los Angeles and knows SoCal very well. I know the elevations throughout most of SoCal. This pilot was flying as low as 150’ at numerous times throughout this flight. This was done to “scud run” and get through to his destination. This is unacceptable and a very dangerous practice. He had multiple chances to end the flight by landing, somewhere. He kept pushing through, into rising terrain westbound towards Calabasas. If you have bad visibility and ceilings in the San Fernando Valley you are definitely going to have a much worse time in higher terrain.

 

It appears he flew into the clouds/fog shortly after. After realizing he was Inadvertent-Instrument Meteorological Conditions (I-IMC, or “cant see because he’s in a cloud”) he did the right thing by focusing on instruments instead, since he has no visual reference with the ground anymore. He actually began to do the right thing by climbing and starting a 180 degree turn. However, most helicopter pilots are not good at flying on instruments since we basically never do it after receiving the rating for the ability. There is a whole conversation of reasons why that is the case but is outside the scope of this comment. So the pilot likely developed Spatial Disorientation and lost control of the helicopter, which is indicated by the rapid descent in the last seconds of the flight.

 

As a helicopter pilot this absolutely enrages me. How someone could flout company policy, standard procedures, regulations and exhibit no shred of professionalism to keep everyone onboard safe is beyond me. He could have just landed at Van Nuys and they could get a car service the rest of the way. I have done this a BUNCH of times, is a little disappointing when you can’t make it to the destination but this was some of the worst conditions we’ve seen in a long while and in the end: what are you doing risking people’s lives to please them? Just. Fucking. Land.

 

Edit: Wow! Thanks for the gold!!

 

Edit 2: I want to make clear in my post (as I have in responses to comments elsewhere) that this is my opinion only. My opinion based off of publicly available data, knowledge from having worked in the industry for 15 years, knowledge of the aircraft, having flown the specific type of aircraft, knowledge of the regulations regarding Part 91, Part 135, and VFR and IFR regulations, local knowledge being a pilot here, and being well-aware of the leading causes of accidents in the helicopter industry. I too am a Certified Flight Instructor and Instrument-Instructor in Helicopters. However, until the NTSB concludes their investigation and finds a cause for this accident then my opinion is only my opinion and not fact. I sincerely, and with all my heart, hope that the NTSB finds a mechanical irregularity led to this accident. Helicopter pilots are a very tight community and we are all brothers. I hope Zobayan is flying his favorite heli right now wherever he is.

 

2./u/dijon_snow theorizes why when Trump's defense lawyers may be misspelling simple words like "United States" and "District" on purpose

Upvotes: 5,9k

At this point it almost has to be intentional. Here are a few potential reasons for it:

1. Shift focus to the trivial. If we're talking about their spelling errors we're not talking about how incredibly ludicrous the content is. They have no valid defense, but now instead of dissecting their brief on its (complete lack of) merits, we are criticizing a typo. Since it's the most obvious, and most ridiculous of all the many criticisms of the document it soaks up a lot of the negative attention.
2. That focus makes critics seem petty. Everyone makes mistakes. It's a typo. You know what they meant. You must be focusing on something so minor because that's all you got. Nothing burger. To the rest of us it's just the most obvious sign that they are incompetent, but if you're already predisposed to support the brief, it's an extremely forgivable and inconsequential error that your opposition is making a big deal out of.
3. Taking advantage of some counter intuitive cognitive biases. The human mind tends to average things that should be summed. Even though it's irrational. If you accuse someone of stealing a $10k car and a $5 hood ornament, people tend to perceive the crime as less than just stealing the car. They will average the severity of the crimes instead of adding them together. By adding in spelling errors some of the audience will average the penalty for spelling errors (minimal, I think we would all agree) with the penalty for sedition (much higher) even though that isn't rational.
4. It signals anti-intellectualism. Only stuck up academics care about spelling. Real Americans care about what you're saying, not how pretty the words are or how they're spelled. The target audience has had their spelling and grammar corrected constantly their entire lives by people who make them feel dumb and lesser. They hate those people.

 

3.u/dididaylia gives their account of what it's like to legally live under Sharia law in "moderately Muslim" Malaysia.

Upvotes: 5,6k

Non Muslims are not subjected to Sharia law. So if you are a Christian or Hindu on paper, then Sharia law will not affect you whatsoever.

How Sharia law affects me:

1. I can't eat out during Ramadhan (I have to watch my back, there are religious police)
2. Can't consume alcohol. (As with the 1st point, you can avoid the religious police by going to high end bars, they will never catch you there)
3. Islamic eduction (Primary and secondary education was the WORST period of my life. I had to be separated from my friends to go to Islamic classes 3 times a week. I can't even express how much this scarred me. I fucking despised it. Sitting in class as an agnostic, I was taught that apostates should be given the death penalty. And this was in a textbook provided by the government. The teacher that taught the class would pester me everyday why I'm not wearing a hijab. She bought me one and told me to wear it beginning the next day, I threw it in the bin in front of her. Everyday when prayer time comes, a disciplinary teacher who monitors the halls will ask me to see her outside the class and she'll ask me why I'm not praying. I always gave her the excuse that I'm on my period, literally every day. One time, she touched my private area to check if I had a pad on. I'm still traumatised by that. I still remember what she wore that day. I don't think I'll ever forget.)
4. Continuation from third point. I have become terrified of Malays and Muslims. I can't help it. If I see a Malay in an event or public space, I don't talk to them, I don't want to be their friend, I avoid them at all cost. Why? Because I'm terrified of them. If I meet 1000 Malays and they for whatever reason suspect me as an apostate, 999 of them are cool with me and 1 person will report me to the religious police, I'll avoid them all. I do have some friends I met from work that are non practising Muslims and they are one of my best friends now. Made me realise how much I'm missing out by avoiding an entire race of people. But I can't change this out of my own safety.
5. I can be prosecuted for premarital sex. Religious police conduct random raids of hotels and anyone can also report me to the religious police if they suspect me doing it. I remember going on a trip with my friends to another state. There were guys and girls, and we all stayed in an Airbnb together. I was terrified of handing over my Id to the house owner. During the entire trip, I kept thinking that the religious police will come and get me.
6. This is the one that hurts me the most. I cry thinking about this every time. I can't marry or have children of my own. Who I marry has to convert to Islam and has to pretend just like I have my whole life. And if I have any children, they will automatically be Muslims, they won't have a choice. And they'll be subjected to everything I gone through from point 1 to point 5.

In conclusion, I just want freedom. That's it. I don't care if a person is a Muslim. That's up to them, I genuinely don't care. I just wish I can believe in anything I want. It doesn't harm anybody.

This is why I wish reincarnation was real, if I had a choice, I'd like to be reborn as a human again. Of course, in a normal country, not one where there's no freedom of religion. At the same time, I also look on the bright side, at least I wasn't born in Iran or North Korea right? Ahhahaha

 

4.u/huianxin summarizes the history of sushi in the United States to explain why Molly Ringwald eating sushi for lunch would be seen as snobbish in 1985's The Breakfast Club.

Upvotes: 5k

I have not seen The Breakfast Club to fully understand the context of the scene. Moreover most of my studies regarding food history lie in East Asia, but I can offer some comments on sushi in America. Sushi in the 1980's would still be considered a meal for an occasion, perhaps not as common a meal for the American culinary vocab as it is nowadays, sitting alongside staples such as pizza or tacos with its accessibility through restaurant takeouts or supermarket trays. Certainly, having a decently priced item such as sushi for high school lunch would draw the comments of fellow students.

 

Japanese food only began to become part of the public American conscious around the 1960's. Following the postwar economic boom years and America's involvement with rebuilding efforts, Japanese culture on a whole began to make waves in America. The worldwide civil unrest of the 60's allowed for American attitudes to broaden and diversify, by the 70's cosmopolitan and consumerist culture meant many educated and upper class families could afford to pursue more adventurous foods. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 allowed for, as its name suggest, more immigration and thus an increase in diversity. This then allowed for ethnic restaurants to open up, sometimes catering to ethnic communities but also for the local populace as well. While there wasn't as big of an immigration of Japanese as other groups during this time, the broadening of palates made the way for sushi to make its mark.

 

From the 1970's to the 1980's, areas of sushi consumption such as Los Angeles and New York saw the number of Japanese restaurants increase by as much as a factor of ten. Nationwide, in the 1990's to 2000's, this number increased 400 percent.

 

Raw fish was not the norm of the America diet, and appropriately was considered strange and exotic. However, increasing attention to health and diet as well the connotation of higher class food allowed sushi to draw a certain appeal. This paired with other avenues of cultural imports, period films from renowned artists like Kurosawa and the popular Shogun miniseries marked keen interest towards Japan. Within America's informal empire, Japan was a close partner. Cooperation and economic growth made the former wartime adversary into a respected global power.

Japanese aesthetics too were see as high class, refined, and cleanly designed, which only added to the sense of upscale participation in foreign cultures. Food writers and critiques could draw upon cliched imagery of the imagined premodern Japan to paint the exotic and foreign factors of sushi’s ingredients, preparation, and presentation. For example, Phyllis Richman wrote,

“sushi are highly developed examples of the art of simplicity, of such beauty that it can be appreciated even in the abstract."

and

“You feel neither stuffed nor hungry. And definitely serene.”

Reviewers of Washington's premier Samurai Sushiko restaurant saw comments like:

“an occasion of purity and subtlety, of contrasting sharpness and intensity, almost a ceremony”

and

“like eating in the middle of a Japanese brush painting” or “a small museum of Japanese arts.”

Another Post writer likened sushi as:

“an edible ikebana. A haiku in seaweed and translucent flesh.”

Karen Kenyon wrote on the San Diego restaurant Samurai:

“Walking into Samurai is like walking into a Zen poem... the feeling of harmony [that] exists in the balance of the Samurai warrior figure and the Japanese Geisha doll who stand and wait on opposite sides of the entry.”

Philadelphia food writer Elaine Tait described her meal at a Japanese restaurant as:

“serenely beautiful as a placid, lily-covered pond.”

All this romanticized imagery of the sushi experience tantilized the middle and upper class Americans. Etiquette to had to be followed as much as one might do in a proper French or Italian restaurant. Manuals described the proper ways of eating sushi. Jeffrey Carmel of the Christian Science Monitor in 1983 wrote:

“Before venturing into a sushi restaurant, it is a good idea to learn some sushi etiquette to avoid embarrassing yourself with soy-sauce-soaked rice balls disintegrating in your fingers and fish falling all over the place.”

Post critic Melissa Davis wrote of her experience"

“The Japanese think it is very funny if you try to bite sushi in half. It is rather like watching someone attack a Big Mac with a knife and fork. Not exactly gauche or rude, but amusingly ignorant. The first time I had sushi, the owner of the restaurant rushed frantically towards me and in sign language showed me how I was doing it all wrong.”

Diners could avoid such scenarios and show off their cultural capital and knowledge by "properly" eating sushi, dipping the sushi in a shallow dish of soy sauce, fish side down, and placing the whole morsel in their mouths.

Japanese food that was known to Americans prior to the explosion of sushi would have been cooked foods, such as teriyaki, tempura, sukiyaki, and the like. By understanding Japanese cuisine as grilled, broiled, boiled, or fried beef, chicken, and seafood, Japanese food was more relatable for the average American. Cookbooks thus omitted mentions of raw fish or sushi. Sushi then stood out and became prominent because it was so unlike any other food. It was raw, colorful, and embodied some premium aesthetic not found in most foods.

Eating sushi became a way to distinguish oneself, to let others see and know your education, economic standing, and openness to new ideas and cultures. In other words, you might be considered a sophisticated individual for daring to eat raw fish, at least, that's what many would have wanted to have been thought as. Poking fun at the consumerist class, The Yuppie Handbook listed sashimi among its “Things Yuppies Eat for Lunch.” Food Historian Lisa Heldke said:

“By sampling a cuisine none of your friends has tasted, you accumulate a bit of sophistication that you can bank, and invest later in a social situation in which it is important to raise your stature.”

To return to The Breakfast Club, Andrew C. McKevitt writes:

Like the other Japanese goods in this book, by the 1980s sushi not only had established a noticeable material presence across the United States but also had entered the American popular imagination. John Hughes’s iconic 1980s teen drama The Breakfast Club used sushi to highlight class distinctions among its detention-bound students. The snobbish wealthy girl explains to the troublemaking boy that she’s eating sushi—“rice, raw fish, and seaweed”— and the working-class delinquent responds churlishly, “You won’t accept a guy’s tongue in your mouth, and you’re going to eat that?” Hughes used the scene to demonstrate the expanding global cosmopolitanism of wealthy Americans, even to poke fun at the quickness with which the upper class adopts chic cultural fads, and to contrast it with the provincial sensibilities of working-class Americans.

All this points to illustrate the position of sushi in the 1970's and 80's, a high class exotic food that captured the imagination and romanization of the foreign and fanciful Japan. Sushi marked your class, both in the sense of sophistication and the socio-economic position. Since then however, sushi has steadily climbed down the ladder of social hierarchy. More restaurants, competition, and the creation of American sushi such as sushi burritos, california rolls, tempura sushi, and other curious items has pushed sushi into a more everyday sort of meal. While high class sashimi and omakase restaurants still exist, one can find a package of sushi even at convenience stores and supermarkets. Interestingly enough, Japanese officials have become "horrified with the liberties taken with their food overseas", so much that the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries created a “Japanese Restaurant Authentication Plan” for the 50,000 some sushi restaurants around the world. Agricultural minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka said:

"What we are seeing now are restaurants that pretend to offer Japanese cooking but are really Korean, Chinese or Filipino,” adding, with no intended irony, “We must protect our food culture.”

Indeed, most sushi and Japanese restaurants in the United States are not owned or staffed by Japanese, but instead of other Asians/Asian Americans. While the authentication program was abandoned over poor media coverage, it shows the changes in sushi landscape from the initial exotic luxury connotations of 70's and 80's to popular global staples of our present day. Much much more can be said about both sushi history and how it symbolizes and reflects the interactions of culture and Asian identity, but for now this should answer the question about the scene in The Breakfast Club.

 

5.u/Erur-Dan perfectly captures the clientele and atmosphere of Outback Steakhouse

Upvotes: 4,5k

Applebee's and Chili's are the restaurants of sadness and apathy. The emotion of Outback is rage.

You're a 53 year old father of two working in commercial truck leasing. You've been working your ass off to repay the vacation money you took from the college fund, and you've been neglecting the wife. You want to give her a nice meal. She likes that guy from animal planet what got shish-kabobed by a stingray, so why not outback? You've been everywhere else in the last few years.

 

She wants to spend eight American dollars on an onion, and you let her because the fucking point of the night is to make her happy, but you can't fucking stand it. The cheapest fucking vegetable in the world and she thinks it's god damn special.

 

You both get steak. Your first bite tastes fine, but you keep chewing. You again continue chewing. You're genuinely confused by the amount of gristle still in your mouth. What few grains of beef that manage to slip out are more an insult than a reward. What the fuck are you supposed to do with the fucking gristle? You fake a cough and drop the wad of gristle on the ground so the wife doesn't complain about it being on your plate. That's when you see. She's staring at you. She doesn't know what to do with her own gristle, and she's noticed you somehow don't have gristle. Whatever she decides you did, you know you're not getting your blow job this month.

 

The smug prick of a waiter offers you desert. It's probably some dumbass name like Kangaroo cheesecake, but you don't hear a word of it. The wife orders one for each of you. You drive home. She thanks you for taking her out. She goes to bed. You get a beer and turn on Fox News. You hear her softly crying, and you're just too fucking tired to care anymore. Maybe she'll fuck that guy from church again and get a little happiness in her life. All you know for sure is that Outback steakhouse should be burned to the ground.

 

6.u/The_Lonely_Satirist guts the arguments of The Right regarding the Capitol Insurrection

Upvotes: 4,1k

I am tired of the bad faith arguments, the false equivalencies, the utter denial and deflection tactics, the double standards, the radicalization, the vague generalizations and stigmatizing, and the incapability of the conservative party, nay the just plain refusal of them to see the forest through the trees.

Right now, conservatives are parroting the talking point, "but but but BLM! ANTIFA! THE LEFT! THEY INCITED RIOTS OVER THE SUMMER!" or they are hedging their bets on the basis of some interpretation of Trump's speech on January 6th.

This isn't just about one speech.

 

Putting aside the fact that the talking point that attempts to shift blame towards democrats in some sort of justification for what occurred on January 6th basically amounts to "two wrongs make a right" (it doesn't), let's put an end to this altogether. The infinitesimally small percentage of riots that occurred over the summer relative to the protests did not hinge on the words of any political leader, any democrat, any fucking tweet or speech. Those riots occurred at the hands of criminals who had no political motivation what so ever, they weren't checking their fucking smart phones for the latest social media blast from Kamala Harris or Joe Biden, or Bernie Sanders, or AOC or Barack Obama, they acted purely out of their own self interests to vandalize, loot, and commit acts of violence. That is the truth. They did not brandish their Biden flags or their liberal banners that wrapped around their necks and were worn like capes. They did not sport their democrat garb or proclaim to represent one party or another. These were apolitical criminals. Plain and simple.

 

Now let's take a look at January 6th. The storming on the capitol was perpetrated by those representing president Trump, those who listened to him spout baseless lies and conspiracy theories, those that hung on his every word via Trump's twitter rants, his rallies, his speeches and Fox News interviews. They waved their Trump flags, carried their Trump banners and chanted his fucking name. take Trump out of the equation, take away his hateful divisive rhetoric, take away his fearmongering propaganda, take away his lies for the past four years, for the months leading up to the election and the months thereafter and you have NO ATTACK ON THE CAPITOL ON JANUARY 6th. This is the part where we see the forest through the trees. It's objectively clear why they were there, why they did what they did. Without Trump and his rhetoric the storming of the capitol never happens. Without some cherry picked comments taken out of context from democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris and company, the riots over the summer still happen. PERIOD.

 

This is so painfully obvious. It's why ashamed conservatives like Rand Paul and Josh Hawley, the cowards they are refused to watch the video in the senate that showed Trump supporters breaking into the capitol, in Trump's name, chanting "hang Mike Pence", shouting "we're listening to TRUMP", beating officers with an American flag, telling eachother to "take their gun and shoot them with it", treasonously taking over the house floor, mobbing the halls of the capitol, vandalizing, smearing their shit on the walls, calling out for democrats, ready at all costs to give any congressmen a thrashing or far far worse. Ready to "drag them out by their necks" and execute them, hang them from an erected gallows. Trump's role he played in January 6th is clear, it's clear to Republicans in the senate who shamefully turn away and will later attempt to justify it, but yet here we are, receiving false equivalencies, bad faith arguments, and whataboutisms from those that would seek to completely deny accountability. Blaming democrats through sweeping generalizations for something they are in no way responsible for and denying Trump's culpability for the attacks on the capitol. Denying the fact that many of Trump's supporters were indeed lied to, manipulated, exploited and brainwashed by a consistent barrage of lies, conspiracies, fearmongering propaganda and misinformation for not just months, but YEARS, and it led to a culture and a movement of vitriol, polarization, hate, violence, extremism, conspiracies, victimhood, denial, but more importantly, it led to the storming of the capitol.

 

7.u/jb3108 explains why law firms (and other professional services) inevitably drive their staff to overwork and burnout - the billable hour.

Upvotes: 3,1k

I was about to rant about the fact that these days the AFR is at best churning out contentless clickbait and at worst acting as a shill for abusive employers and their shit cunt practices but instead I'll write what Mr Barolsky should have. Keep in mind I'm writing this from the perspective of a jaded, but (somehow) not burnt out, corporate lawyer.

 

To understand why the legal profession is so hard on its members you have to understand the business of law. Law firms, like most professional services firms, are pyramid schemes. Lawyers sell their time at an hourly rate. Sometimes those hourly rates are very high but regardless of the rate, time does not scale as a commodity and it never will. There are 24 hours in a day, and every one of those 24 hours you spend working is one hour less that you get to spend, ya know, living.

 

So, if you're a seasoned lawyer who sells his time at $1000/hr, how do you increase the profitability of your practice? Your hourly rate is already as high as the market for your services will allow and you can't sustainably bill more than 10 hours a day. Some lawyers in less regulated jurisdictions have come up with creative ways to bill for the value they bring to their clients that breaks away from the billable hours model, but for most the only way to increase the profitability of their practice without cutting out essential activities like sleeping, shitting and sacrificing goats at midnight is to profit from other lawyers selling their time.

 

That brings us to the concept of the "fee earner". You know that scene in the Matrix where Morpheus explains what humans are by reference to a Duracell battery? That's what a fee earner is, except rather than harvesting energy from humans for the consumption of machines, law firms harvest billable hours from their fee earners and sell them for cash.

 

Your time on this earth is the only commodity that your firm sells. More than that, it is the only commodity it can sell. This all sounds simple but there's a big catch in that there are only 4 ways a law firm can increase its profit margins: (1) increase hourly rates, (2) reduce the amount fee earners are paid, (3) reduce overheads (i.e. take resources away from your fee earners and make them do more with less) or (4) increase the number of hours per day that fee earners bill. If we assume firms will generally charge the highest hourly rate the market will allow (and they do), every means of maximising profitability available to a law firm is counteractive to the interests of its employees.

 

Where businesses in other industries have significant opportunity to increase their profitability without diminishing the working conditions of their employees (for example, through technological innovation, IP development, capital gains or supply chain optimisation), law firms maximise their profit by maximising the amount of hours per day that each fee earner bills and minimising overheads.

 

A law firm reaches optimal profitability when every fee earner is billing 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Of course, that is impossible but from a balance sheet perspective every hour per day that a fee earner is not billing is wasted. In other words, it is in a law firm's commercial interests for you to be overworked, underpaid and under-resourced, and that is an inescapable feature of the billable hour.

I'm not saying the problem is unique to law, plenty of companies in other industries abuse their staff, but in law firms fee earners are both staff and product. I can think of no other profession where commercial interests are so diametrically opposed to health and wellbeing.

 

A car manufacturer can increase its profit per product by using cheaper materials, automating more of the production line or improving its processes to reduce wasted resources. Those things all have consequences, but the car doesn't have sentient thoughts, feelings and a biologically limited number of days on this planet.

 

The billable hour is problematic not only because it's antiquated and doesn't properly measure the value of services provided, but also because as an economic model it positions human wellbeing antithetically to the profit motive.

Anyway, that's my rant, I will forward my bill for the 8 units I spent writing it later cunts.

Edit: I should clear up some misconceptions since this was written for Australian lawyers and it seems we have plenty of blow-ins here.

 

First, billable hours and timesheets are obviously not unique to law but there are several features unique to the billable hour for lawyers (and probably for accountants working on time-based billing as well) which are not true for, say, management consultants. In management consulting you're usually delivering a product or project for a fixed or variable price, and timesheets are mostly used internally to track time spent on a given project. The product you are selling to the client, though, is not the billable hour itself.

Second, inaccurate or fraudulent billing is one of the leading causes of lawyers being sanctioned or struck off (or disbarred, as our yank mates would say). It's not so common with corporate clients but in practice areas where most clients are individuals paying the bill out of their own pocket, you can bet they'll scrutinise every bill closely.

 

Third, yes, doctors have patients and there might be a financial incentive to see more patients in a day to increase profit margin but patients are corporeal. They will not come to see you at 1am (unless you're an emergency doctor, in which case you're not paid per patient anyway). It's apples and oranges.

 

Finally, law firm partners/management squeezing their associates for billable hours are not necessarily doing anything other than attempting to maximise the profitability of their business. At least on a macro level, it's not that they hate their associates and want to grind them into dust (although, in some cases they might). All business should try to increase their profits, that's how a market economy works but, at least in Australia, law firms attempting to transact in any medium other than billable hours often face heavy resistance from regulators and clients.

 

8.u/kaenneth explains why in Japanese having two commentators is preferred more than one.

Upvotes: 3,1k

The way it was explained to me decades ago is that Japanese is more of a 'dialog' language, because the form of speech varies depending on your relationship with the person you are talking to, it works better with having two known people go back and forth than having the the speaker addressing the camera, using the wrong form of speech.

 

I learned this working on software localization, where we had to scrub a product of every place where it said 'you' like "You click the Start button to open the menu." because addressing the user was difficult to translate.

 

That's why they talk to each other instead of the audience.

Again, that's how it was explained to me by someone knowledgeable, so I don't have a citation, maybe someone else has a better explanation.

 

9.u/stevenjackson121 explains how developers can handle people who want to develop an app with you.

Upvotes: 3,1k

I had so many of those in college. I enjoyed them actually and classmates would happily refer anyone who asked them to me, instead of shooting down their friends personally. Conversations usually went like this:

 

"I have a great idea, I just need you to develop it. "

"Great! Development is what I'm good at, if you're good at everything else we'll make a good team. So what's the basic idea?"

"It will be like XXX but for YYY"

"That sounds like it could be a viable idea. Are you sure no one has done that?"

"Of course, its my own original total great idea"

"I think the basic idea is solid, but can you explain what differentiates your product from AAA?"

"Whats AAA?"

"AAA claims to be XXX but for YYY. You said your idea is original and no one has done it, so I know it must be different. Can you explain the difference?"

"Uh well AAA looks like it only has an Android App, we'll do Android and iOS"

"They list iOS as 'coming soon', and have a fully functional app on one platform already along with assets and presumably a backend which will be reusable for the iOS version, and since they have an existing user base and we don't, a tie in time to market basically means they win. If your only differentiator is being available on more platforms sooner, you must be ready to make a large capital investment to try to beat them there. I believe in you and will work as development lead for only stock options, but we honestly need a team to catch up. With 5 experienced developers @100k per year $500k should get the development team through the first year. I'll let you worry about the details on the marketing and design side, but going against an established product probably means similar investments there too. How quickly can you get $1,000,000 together so we can get started?"

"... Actually i had another idea that I think might be even better..."

"Awesome, whats the basic idea?"

<repeat until they give up and go away>

 

10.u/CCtenor breaks down the levels on which sexist comments work

Upvotes: 3,2k

It’s funny to speculate, but it wouldn’t work. Men and women face different struggles, so the jokes that are derogatory towards women would probably be a lot of men’s dream.

 

“Go chop some lumber. Go fix my car. Get back in the wood shop and make me some furniture”.

I can personally say “absolutely, the fuck, yes”. I’d leap at the opportunity to not have to do office work so I could instead be “forced” to use my time woodworking and machining. Don’t get me wrong, I like my work just fine, but I’m much more engaged with directly creative tasks than I am office work. Hell, my response to “get back in the kitchen” would be “don’t threaten me with a good time”. One of the reasons I’m happy with my job is that, when I can finally move out, it should let me keep a fully stocked pantry, and a kitchen with quality tools, so I can make my own food on my own terms. I love the process of cooking, and if somebody told me I was too stupid to do office work and belonged in the kitchen, then decided to completely subsidize my lifestyle so all I had to do was cook, well

Never interrupt your enemy while he’s making a mistake

This post focuses on the insult itself as a direct way of denigrating people, not what the insult means. Being condemned to the kitchen is offensive to women because they struggle to be take seriously in the work place. Women are more than dishwashers and homemakers.

 

However, many men are condemned for showing emotion and following more creative pursuits. If you told a guy to “go home and fucking knit, you’re not meant to do office work”, and that guy loved knitting, you’d probably actually be validating his desires.

 

So, directly flipping this insult on it’s head doesn’t work because it misses the point. Condemning women to the kitchen to make a sandwich is demeaning because it invalidates women and their desire to be seen as equal people. Condemning a man to the garage or lumberyard would, for many guys, be welcome permission to likely do many things we already like to do.

You want to properly flip this insult around?

 

“Stop messing with your kids and go back to the office. You’re not supposed to care for kids, you’re supposed to bring home the bread. You’re not emotionally capable of properly interacting with, and raising, children.”

EDIT: well, shit, I didn’t think I’d be able to do this good a job at explaining myself. I’m glad people are finding this helpful.

 

What is Reddit? It's a site that calls itself the "first page of the Internet." The most popular things on the web get here with the help of users. The process is simple.

Reddit is thus a kind of social aggregator of news and content, which is based on the popular vote. The community is known to be very pretentious and tough, but the entrance is harder, because Reddit catches on quickly, through the addiction it creates.

What can be uploaded to Reddit? Almost anything. At the end of this material we have put some links to subreddits, ie subcategories of the site, based on common interests. But these are a tiny part. Anyone can open a Subreddit and moderate it. The important thing is for users to come to it, just like you would a news sub-bred.

Thus, Bemorepanda collected the top 30 news on reddit.

1.China Uses Rape as Torture Tactic Against Uighur Detainees, Victims Say

Upvotes: 61.8k

According to testimonies obtained by the BBC, women inmates in China's "re-education camps" for Muslim Uyghurs have been systematically raped and tortured.

 

The US government said it was deeply alarmed by BBC material detailing allegations of systematic rape of Uyghur women in Chinese camps.

 

"These atrocities are shocking and should have serious consequences," a government spokesman said.

 

British Government Minister Nigel Adams also on Thursday condemned in parliament the practice described in the material in the camps, calling it a clear evil.

 

It is estimated that over a million Uyghurs and other minorities are being held in camps in China.

 

The Chinese Foreign Ministry called the material, based on the testimony of several former prisoners and one guard, a fake.

 

Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said that there is no systemic violence against women in China and that China runs all of its institutions in accordance with human rights guidelines.

 

"China is a country ruled by law, our constitution guarantees and protects human rights, this is embodied in our legal system, according to which governments operate," he said.

 

2.Police killed baby when shooting at father's truck, Canada watchdog finds

Upvotes: 18,2k

Police in the American city of Cleveland shot a 12-year-old boy who was holding a pneumatic pistol that was outwardly indistinguishable from a combat one.

 

Police said the teenager Tamir Rice was shot after failing to comply with a request to raise his hands in the air.

 

The police were called by a passerby who said that the teenager scares people by brandishing a pistol. The caller added that he did not know if it was a real pistol.

 

The police fired two shots. The boy died in hospital shortly after the incident.

 

Cleveland Deputy Chief of Police Ed Tomba said Tamir Rice did not shout any threats or point a pistol at the police.

 

According to law enforcement officers, the boy had an air pistol that lacked an orange safety indicator that would distinguish him from the real one.

 

The head of the Cleveland Police Association, Jeff Vollmer, said the police did not know the gun might not be real.

 

At the moment, the incident is being investigated. Both police officers are sent on administrative leave - this is standard practice in such cases.

 

3.Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza's 2015 and 2017 poisonings linked to the same FSB Unit that poisoned Navalny.

Upvotes: 6.6k

Bellingcat's team of investigators found that FSB officers who followed Alexei Navalny on the day of his poisoning also systematically monitored the movements of opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr. both before his first and second hospitalizations.

 

The opposition politician was allegedly poisoned twice. In 2015, Kara-Murza suddenly became ill while meeting with colleagues. The doctors diagnosed him with acute renal failure due to intoxication. For a long time, the politician was in a state of artificial coma, was connected to artificial life support devices.

 

"Unidentified substance" and "aggressive inaction": poisoning of oppositionists in Russia

Kara-Murza is sure that he was poisoned. An examination carried out in France established a significant excess of the norm for the content of heavy metals in the politician's body, but the Russian forensic medical examination was unable to confirm the poisoning.

 

Two years later, in February 2017, Kara-Murza was hospitalized in critical condition in a Moscow hospital with the same symptoms as the first time. Kara-Murza survived. As he later said, doctors claimed that his chances of survival were about 5%.

 

After the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, Kara-Murza said in an interview that the symptoms described by Navalny "coincide one to one with those symptoms" that he himself had with both poisonings.

 

4.Global salmon farming harming marine life and costing billions in damage |

Upvotes: 4,4k

The global salmon farming industry estimates that salmon farming destroys marine ecosystems through pollution, parasites and high fish mortality, causing billions of pounds a year.

 

Collectively, these costs totaled about $ 50 billion between 2013 and 2019, according to a report released Thursday.

 

Fish mortality has more than quadrupled, from 3% in 2002 to about 13.5% in 2019, only on Scottish salmon farms. About one-fifth of these deaths are reported as a result of sea lice infestation, but about two-thirds are not taken into account, so the actual mortality of sea lice feeding on the skin and mucus of salmon, in fact consuming live fish, it can be much superior. ...

 

Scotland is one of the largest producers of farmed salmon in the world and generates around £ 2 billion a year for the Scottish economy. But from an environmental perspective alone, it is estimated that Just Economics spent £ 1.4 billion between 2013 and 2019, which conducted research on a report called Dead Loss for the Changing Markets Foundation.

 

The large amount of wild fish used on salmon farms is also a growing concern. About a fifth of the world's annual catches of wild fish, about 18 million tonnes of wild fish per year, are used to produce fishmeal and fish oil, of which about 70% goes fishing. This poses problems for fishermen in developing countries, who see their stocks dwindle to feed Western consumption of farmed fish, according to the report.

 

5.Second Victim Dies Of Ebola In Congo, Marking Virus's Return

Upvotes: 3,3k

The second person to contract the Ebola virus died this week in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This was another outbreak just three months after the country experienced the second worst outbreak of the virus in history.

 

The youngest victim came from North Kivu province, the World Health Organization and the Ministry of the Democratic Republic of the Congo said on Thursday.

 

The death came a week after the death of a 42-year-old woman from Ebola. As the wife of an Ebola survivor, she was admitted to intensive care on February 4 and died the same day. She was buried on February 5, but not according to good burial practice to prevent the spread of Ebola. In previous outbreaks, body manipulation has been minimized and carried out by trained teams.

 

The lab confirmed that she tested positive for Ebola the day after her funeral.

 

6.Shell says its oil production has peaked and will fall every year

Upvotes: 2,4k

Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA) has announced that oil production and carbon emissions have peaked as there are detailed plans for phasing out fossil fuels. Climate activists have said this is not enough.

 

The Anglo-Dutch company said in a statement on Thursday that it expects its oil production to fall by 1-2% annually, after a peak in 2019. Total carbon emissions are likely to increase in 2018, he said.

In September, Shell announced plans to become a zero-emission business (including its own and marketed products) by 2050 and switch to clean energy with European competitors BP (BP) and Total (TOT).

 

Oil giants have canceled billions of dollars in assets based on forecasts that global oil demand will never return to pre-pandemic levels due to changes in lifestyle and movement of people, as well as growing fears about the climate crisis .

Shell is now determining how he will achieve his goals. It wants to sell more clean energy by investing in carbon capture and reforestation projects to offset emissions. In addition, the business for the production and sale of biofuels will be expanded.

 

7.Iranian nuke scientist killed by Israeli 1-ton automated gun

Upvotes: 2.0k

Leading Iranian scholar Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed in November by a Mossad group using one-ton automatic weapons that were smuggled into Iran in parts, according to a report published in the Jewish Chronicle in London on Wednesday.

 

The report says the US was not involved in an operation that could have led to the cancellation of Iran's nuclear program for years.

 

The veracity of the message cannot be independently verified.

 

Apparently based at least in part on unnamed Israeli sources, the report came in time to send a signal to both Iran, which is openly violating the 2015 P5 + 1 nuclear deal, and the new US administration, which intends to renegotiate the agreement, stressing, that Israel's decision to take any action is necessary to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

 

Fakhrizadeh was killed on a road outside Tehran on November 27. Iran accused Israel of striking.

 

8.Senate votes to expand Canadians' access to assisted death; amendment allows people who fear losing mental capacity to make advance request

Upvotes: 1,8k

On Wednesday, senators voted to expand Canada's dying regime so that people who fear mental loss can seek medical attention in advance to commit suicide.

 

The amendment to Bill C-7 was approved by 47 votes to 28, with eight abstentions.

 

Senator Pamela Wallin, a member of the Canadian senatorial group that proposed the amendment, said the law now captures Canadians in a "twisted diagnostic lottery." She noted that someone diagnosed with terminal cancer may receive help in the form of death, but someone with Alzheimer's or other conditions that affect cognitive function may have already lost the mental capacity to consent at the time of diagnosis.

 

“As someone with a history of dementia in my family, I am looking for peace of mind that will give prior request and consent,” Wallin told the Senate.

 

“I am certainly not alone in this belief. Most Canadians have come to the same conclusion. "

 

Giving people the opportunity to submit written requests in advance indicating when they would like death assistance “would give those who fear losing their conscious abilities the confidence that they can access MAID (Assisted Death). where consent may not be possible, ”Wallin said.

 

9.EU Starts Work on Russia Sanctions Over Navalny Imprisonment

Upvotes: 1,7k

The European Union is working on a proposal to impose sanctions on Russia over the imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was subjected to a near-fatal attack on a nerve agent that he and Western governments blamed Russian intelligence for.

 

EU ambassadors discussed punitive measures at a meeting on Wednesday, according to two diplomats familiar with the discussion. No Member State objected to the proposal, said one person, who asked not to be identified because the negotiations were private.

 

European Commission spokesman Peter Stano declined to comment on the talks, but added that "work is underway" on possible actions. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Tuesday that the EU's next steps could include sanctions and "presenting concrete proposals."

 

The sanctions deal came after Borrell was heavily criticized for a humiliating trip to Moscow last week, when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov used a joint press conference to condemn the bloc, criticizing the EU as a reliable partner. Russia simultaneously announced the expulsion of three diplomats from Poland, Germany and Sweden for "registered participation" in protests against Navalny's prison. EU countries reciprocated.

 

10.China bans BBC for 'content violation'

Upvotes: 1,9k

The Beijing regulator said early Friday that it had banned the BBC World Service from China for what state media called “grave content violations,” and RTHK also decided to stop the broadcaster's live coverage.

 

The ban by mainland officials comes amid a controversy over British broadcaster reporting on the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang and following a decision by the British broadcasting regulator to revoke Beijing-backed CGTN license.

 

The official Xinhua News Agency quoted the National Radio and Television Administration as saying, “Since the channel does not meet the requirements for broadcasting in China as an overseas channel, BBC World News cannot continue to operate in China.

 

11.Saudi Activist who led the campaign to legalize Driving for Women is Released from Jail

Upvotes: 1,0k

According to her family, Saudi Arabia has released the detained activist Lujain al-Khatlul, best known for spearheading a campaign to legalize driving for women in Saudi Arabia. She was held in custody for almost three years.

 

The 31-year-old activist was detained in May 2018 along with several other activists, just weeks before the Saudi Arabian government lifted the ban.

 

In December, a judge sentenced al-Khatlul to five years and eight months in prison under broad anti-terrorism law. The charges against her include exchanging information with foreign diplomats and journalists and trying to change the Saudi system.

 

The judge suspended part of her sentence and gave time for another part, which led to her release on Wednesday. Al-Khatlul has already appealed her conviction under the anti-terrorism law.

 

12.A group of tourists have gone missing in an infamous Russian mountain pass where nine people died under mysterious circumstances more than 60 years ago.

Upvotes: 892

A group of tourists disappeared during the infamous roller coaster ride in which nine people died mysteriously over 60 years ago.

 

Eight Moscow tourists who ventured to the Dyatlov Pass in the Urals region did not return until Wednesday morning, as expected, a local resident told E1.RU.

 

The source said: “They were supposed to leave at eight o'clock this morning. But they have not returned yet and there is no contact with them. "

 

According to the source, tourists came to visit the crossing to honor the memory of the nine people who died on it in February 1959.

 

13.Undercover footage at French pig farm shows 'abusive' conditions

Upvotes: 795

French veterinary officials have been accused of publishing the results of a "hopeful" inspection after secret footage of a farm in December showed pigs in conditions that continued to break regulations following allegations of abuse.

 

The farm is a supplier of the Herta de Frankfurter brand, partly owned by Nestlé, which is sold in most major UK supermarkets.

 

In December 2020, French nongovernmental organization L214 released classified images that appear to show pig cannibalism and other serious problems at a farm supplying Herta-branded pigs. The brand is 60% owned by the Spanish food company Casa Tarradellas and 40% by Nestlé.

 

The allegations led Waitrose to suspend sales of Herta products and Nestlé to suspend shipments from the Herta farm pending an investigation. Separately, the Allier region government has launched its own investigation.

 

On December 16, Allier effectively dropped all charges of mistreatment from the pig farmer. His statement said: "Overall, the inspection concluded that the farm is in good condition and there are no major inconsistencies."

 

However, new secret images, which were allegedly captured in January 2021 and released today, appear to show pigs in conditions that still violate French rules, L214 reports. The violations cited by NGOs include: lack of hay, straw or other bedding, lack of obvious fresh water, pigs with tied tails, and inappropriate floors.

 

14.Australian state of Victoria to go into Stage 4 Lockdowns from Midnight after 12 community transmission cases of UK COVID-19 Strain detected.

Upvotes: 766

Health Secretary Martin Foley has said bluntly that the blockade is an attempt to avoid the “third wave,” a language that Victorian politicians usually try very hard to avoid, so I would say this is a sure indicator of how seriously they take it. flash.

 

“The important need to overcome this virus and make a short and abrupt transition is that we don't have a third wave. And the third wave will be a disaster, especially for our vulnerable Victorians. these people feel bad in hospitals. "

 

15.A leader of the Polish Women’s Strike, the movement that has led mass nationwide protests against a near total abortion ban in Poland, has been charged with criminal felonies. Marta Lempart was formally read the charges at the district prosecutor’s office in Warsaw

Upvotes: 488

The leader of the Polish Women's Strike, a movement that has led massive protests across the country against Poland's near-total abortion ban, is accused of crimes.

 

Marta Lempart told The Associated Press on Thursday that the allegations were made public at the Warsaw District Prosecutor's Office on Wednesday.

 

The charges against Lempart include insulting a police officer and provoking an epidemiological threat to organize protests during the coronavirus pandemic. According to Polish law, a person can receive from six months to eight years in prison for creating an epidemiological threat.

 

Lempart was also accused of praising church vandalism and "malicious obstruction" of religious services after positive comments in a radio interview that protesters sprayed paint on church facades and thwarted the masses during protests.

 

Lempart told The Associated Press that he sees the allegations as increasing political pressure on his movement.

 

Development is underway as the European Union has repeatedly expressed concern about the undermining of democratic rules in a member state. LGBT and independent media are also under intense pressure from the right-wing government.

 

16.Biden says call with Chinese leader Xi lasted two hours

Upvotes: 400

President Joe Biden said he spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping for two hours on Wednesday night.

 

“They will, if we don't move, they will eat our lunch,” Biden told reporters. It was their first phone call as leaders, and Biden said that a free and open Indo-Pacific region is a priority and that a standoff with Xi's warning would be a "disaster" for both countries.

 

17.Nepal has banned two Indian climbers and their team leader for six years from mountaineering in the country after an investigation found they had faked their 2016 climb up Mt Everest.

Upvotes: 483

Nepal has banned two Indian climbers and their team leader from climbing the country for six years after an investigation showed they provoked a climb to Mount Everest in 2016.

 

The ascent of Narendra Singh Yadav and Sima Rani Goswami was certified by the tourism department at that time.

 

A lawsuit was brought against them when they did not provide any evidence after Yadav was nominated for the award.

 

Mr Yadav and Ms Goswami have yet to comment on Wednesday's statement.

 

Reaching the top of the mountain at 8,848.86 m (29,032 ft) is considered a brilliant thing for climbers around the world.

 

18.These satellite images capture the enormity of India's devastating glacier collapse

Upvotes: 641

Rescuers continue to hunt for survivors after severe floods in the Indian Himalayas, scientists were busy collecting pieces of data to figure out what happened.

 

Research is ongoing, but early reports suggest it was the result of what is known as a glacial lake eruption flood, and appears to have been premature.

 

The natural disaster that has dropped rocks, ice and water into river systems in northern Uttarakhand has already killed more than 20 people, and local reports suggest that at least 100 people are still not expected.

 

19.From Myanmar to Ethiopia, internet shutdowns become favoured tool of regimes

Upvotes: 368

When Myanmar's army generals staged a coup last week, they briefly turned off internet access in an apparent attempt to thwart the protests. In Uganda, residents have been unable to use Facebook, Twitter and other social media for several weeks after the recent elections. And in the northern region of Ethiopia, Tigray, the Internet has been on the decline in a matter of months due to wider conflict.

 

Globally, shutting down the Internet is becoming an increasingly popular tactic of repressive and authoritarian regimes and illiberal democracies. Digital rights groups say governments use it to suppress dissent, silence opposition voices, or cover up human rights abuses, raising fears of restrictions on free speech.

 

Regimes often cut access to the network in response to protests or civil unrest, especially in relation to elections, as they try to maintain power by restricting the flow of information, researchers say. It is the digital equivalent of the control over local television and radio stations that was part of the pre-Internet despots' manual.

 

“Over the years, the shutdown of the Internet has not been reported or reported incorrectly,” said Alp Toker, founder of Internet monitoring organization Netblocks. The world "begins to understand what is happening" by documenting such efforts.

 

20.B.C. man ordered to pay $7 million for brutal beating of teenager

Upvotes: 378

The Kamloops man was forced to pay nearly $ 7 million to cover health care costs and missed the opportunity of a teenager he nearly beat to death with a baseball bat because he broke into his yard.

 

Jesse Simpson was 18 and weighed about 135 pounds when she got lost in Christopher Teichreib's yard on June 19, 2016 after celebrating her high school graduation with a group of friends.

 

Teichrib, who was 39 years old and weighed 220 kilograms, was worried about a burglary next door.

 

According to B.C. According to the Supreme Court ruling, an elderly man punched and kicked Simpson and then beat him with a bat strong enough to inflict injuries, which an RCMP officer called "the worst he has ever seen," including when the victim was beaten to death. of death ".

 

21.Over 60% of S. Korean youth say unification with NK necessary: survey

Upvotes: 218

The poll showed that more than six in 10 young people in South Korea find it necessary to unite with North Korea.

 

In a survey conducted by the Ministries of Education and Education of 68,750 elementary, middle and high school students across the country from November 2-30 last year, 62.4 percent said the two Koreas should be reunited.

 

This result is 6.9 percentage points higher than a similar survey conducted a year ago. Among the students who saw the need for unification, 28.4% cited a reduction in the threat of war, and 25.5% named common ethnic roots as the reason.

 

The proportion of those who considered merging unnecessary also rose to 24.2 percent, compared with 13.7 percent in 2018 and 19.4 percent in 2019. Potential economic and social problems that could sweat at the event were the most common reasons they cited for their opposition. 27.6 percent and 23 percent, respectively.

 

Of the total number of respondents, 13.4% stated that they had not decided on this issue.

 

54.7% of those surveyed said they consider North Korea a cooperative partner, up 10.9% annually. The share of those who considered the North a country to be wary of fell by 11.6 percentage points to 24.2 percent.

 

The share of those who rated the Seoul-Pyongyang relationship as “inconvenient” was 35.2%, an increase for the second year in a row.

 

The two Koreas are technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a ceasefire rather than a peace treaty. Seoul and Pyongyang have made progress in cross-border trade since the North's participation in the 2018 Winter Olympics, which has subsequently led to historic high-level bilateral diplomacy.

 

But the peace did not last long as the summit of former US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi in February 2019 collapsed without a peace deal. (Yonhap)

 

22.Ozone layer recovery back on track after China slows CFC-11 production

Upvotes: 236

In recent years, scientists have been alarmed by the unexplained sudden increase in the amount of ozone-depleting chemicals in the atmosphere. Higher levels of trichlorofluoromethane, also known as CFC-11, are found in air samples despite being officially banned worldwide since 2010.

 

Scientists were concerned that this growth is slowing efforts to provide a thin layer of protection from the Earth's atmosphere, which absorbs most of the Sun's ultraviolet radiation. Unfiltered exposure to sunlight can contribute to DNA damage and increase the long-term risk of skin cancer and other health problems.

 

23.New Zealand schoolkids helping save butterfly on the verge of extinction

Upvotes: 257

An initiative led by Christchurch elementary school students helped create a new home for a local butterfly, so rare that it has no scientific name.

 

Fifteen copper boulder butterflies, relatives of the Canterbury copper butterflies, were released Thursday into purpose-built habitat at Burnside Elementary School.

 

Science teacher Bianca Voyak said the project was born after science students in grades 3 and 4 became "obsessed with insects," in part due to an advertisement for an insect collection at Countdown supermarket.

 

Voyak managed to convince Animal Planet's Ruud Kleinpaste to talk to the students.

 

24.Millions of counterfeit N95 masks distributed to health care workers in the U.S.

Upvotes: 185

Thousands of fake 3M respirators have passed by American researchers in recent months, reaching the cheeks and beards of healthcare professionals and perplexed experts who say they are not much below reality.

 

N95 masks are prized for their ability to filter 95% of the smallest particles that coronavirus can carry. But the lies that have poured into the country have deceived health officials from coast to coast. According to the state hospital association, up to 1.9 million fake 3M masks have been shipped to about 40 hospitals in Washington state, prompting officials to alert employees and remove the masks from the shelf. Cleveland's elite clinic recently admitted that it has accidentally distributed 3M counterfeits to hospital staff since November. The Minnesota hospital did the same.

 

Nurses at the University of Jersey Shore Medical Center in Neptune, NJ have been extremely suspicious since November that the deformed and odd-smelling 3M masks they were given were knockoffs, and their concerns were fueled by the number of batches of masks. matches the number of batches of masks the company has listed on the Internet as possible fakes.

 

25.Trudeau's criticism of Trump cited at U.S. impeachment trial | CBC News

Upvotes: 170

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's critical comments about Donald Trump following the January 6 attack on the Capitol were recorded in the process of overthrowing the former US president.

 

Democrats, urging the U.S. Senate to condemn Trump for inciting insurgency and prevent him from running for office again, said Thursday the attack on the Capitol damaged the reputation of American democracy around the world.

 

Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas MP who is one of the layoff managers acting against Trump, argued that the circumstances surrounding the January 6 uprising could have devastating consequences for democracy around the world.

 

He said the US is at risk of losing the ability to promote free government beyond its borders.

 

Castro cited comments from China, Russia, and Iran, ridiculing the United States and suggesting that you think about your own business from now on. He quoted one senior Russian parliamentarian as saying: "The celebration of democracy is over ... America is no longer on its course and therefore has lost all rights to establish it."

 

26.ISIS could regain capacity to orchestrate attacks in 2021: UN official - Times of India

Upvotes: 155

Deputy Secretary General, head of the Counter-Terrorism Directorate Vladimir Voronkov said this at a meeting of the UN Security Council.

 

Today, the UN Security Council, chaired by Tunisia, held a ministerial meeting on “Trends, Challenges and Opportunities” to mark the twentieth anniversary of resolution 1373 (2001), which, among other things, established the Counter-Terrorism Committee. This decision was made after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States - in New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania.

 

Since then, as Voronkov noted, the threat of terrorism has not disappeared. Despite the loss of many leaders, Al-Qaeda is not only still functioning - it has turned into a dangerous transnational model of regional formations that parasitize on conflicts and deprivation of the population. In addition, new terrorist groups have emerged, including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).

 

ISIS is actively using social media to recruit followers around the world, create overseas cells and "nurture" foreign fighters.

“ISIS fighters were defeated in Iraq and Syria, having lost control over [occupied] territories. However, this grouping continues to pose a threat to the region, carries out attacks and tries to return to operations outside the region, "Voronkov stressed.

 

Today, he said, the priority is to bring to justice those responsible for crimes committed by ISIS, as well as to ensure the repatriation of thousands of foreign nationals with ties to ISIS, mostly women and children who are huddled in overcrowded camps, mostly in Syria.

 

“We must remain extremely vigilant, constantly remembering that for many states the terrorist threat remains very real,” the Deputy Secretary General warned.

According to him, today terrorists parasitize on the difficulties associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, and also use "manifestations of polarization and hate speech that have become more frequent during the pandemic."

 

27.Employees of Iron Ore mine in Canada's artic, stranded by indigenous protests write letter in support asking for expansion to be called off. Company theatens to fire workers who support indigenous protesters.

Upvotes: 174

The CBC received an open letter, written by a "sizable minority" of the Mary River mine currently stranded in Nunavut to protest, saying they recognize the Inuit as "the guardians of the country."

 

About 700 employees in the southern provinces have been stuck in the Nunavut mine after a group of protesters staged a blockade last week, blocking roads and runways. Protesters are protesting against my proposed expansion of the Baffinland Iron Mines Corporation and fearing the consequences for the water and surrounding areas.

 

CBC verified the authenticity of the letter and recognized the anonymity of the miners. The letter was edited in style:

 

This is an open letter to the Baffinland Mary River protesters from a group of miners.

 

Our managers have warned us that a public statement about this may lead to its termination, so this letter must remain anonymous.

 

We are writing to express our full support for the efforts, means and purposes of your protest. We do not pretend to represent the views of the majority of Baffinland workers, but we represent a significant minority.

 

We recognize the Inuit as the legal custodians of this land and the people who must make decisions about how to use it.

 

Your protest has sparked a lot of talk among the workers here. Many of us are disappointed that our return flights have been delayed, but some also consider this a small thing compared to the hundreds of years of colonization and cultural destruction that Aboriginal people have experienced - and continue to experience - at the hands of Canadians. government and private sector.

 

This country saw the consequences of law and greed that led to the destruction of land for profit, and we are glad that you are fighting for the autonomy of your land.

 

You said that you are not dissatisfied with the workers, but the directors of Baffinland, and we would like to say that we also support not the bosses in the company, but you.

 

Many times we have looked back at huge piles of iron ore surrounded by kilometers of rusty snow, colossal diesel tanks and clouds of exhaust gases hanging over the camp, and thought, "What the hell are we doing here?"

 

We strongly believe that the company should listen to your requests and give you what you want, even though that won't be enough. Given the horrific history of this country and how your voices were drowned out in the process, what could be enough?

 

Despite the order now requiring you to clear the runway, we hope you can achieve your goal of preventing the doubling of production and the construction of the railroad in the second phase of the Baffinland project.

 

Pond Inlet Protesters Say Mine Expansion Ignores Nunavut Agreement

This expansion will obviously affect wildlife and the surrounding ecosystem, which will be another step towards destroying the means to support you through hunting. We see the importance of protecting the lifestyles that you have been practicing for millennia.

 

A message to the public only after learning of this: Baffinland workers are safe and not endangered at any stage of this situation.

 

The protesters from the very beginning said they would release flights in case of an accident. We have enough food to last for a long time, and although we are disappointed with the cancellation of our flights, as I said earlier, this is nothing compared to how important it is to listen to the voices of these people as they fight to protect their land and culture.

 

28.Twenty Israelis suspected of selling advanced missiles to Asian country — the suspects, who include former Israeli defense officials, 'developed, manufactured and tested' the weapons before clandestinely selling them

Upvotes: 140

More than 20 Israelis, including former employees of Israeli defense firms, have been prosecuted for illegally selling weapons to their American rival in Asia.

 

Most of the details of the investigation, including information about the country in which the investigation is ongoing, were not disclosed. Sources familiar with the investigation said the case was extremely delicate as it could affect Israel's foreign relations and lead to a superpower crisis.

 

According to a statement by Israeli police on Thursday, an investigation by Shin Bet security found the suspects "have developed, produced, tested and sold military missiles to an Asian country."

 

The suspects, Shin Bet said, received instructions from "elements" in the Asian country in exchange for substantial sums of money and other perks. Contacts were maintained in secret. Some Shabak officials said there were fears that information about the missiles could reach enemy countries because the country to which they were sold has ties with them.

 

29.Ukraine bans registration of Russian COVID-19 vaccines and COVID-19-related drugs, as a measure against Russian agression

Upvotes: 135

Ukraine has officially banned registration of the coronavirus vaccines developed by Russia, according to a government decree released Wednesday.

 

Ukraine, one of the poorest countries in Europe, has lagged behind in launching a vaccination program against COVID-19, which has infected more than 1.25 million Ukrainians and killed 23,934 since February 10.

 

But the Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly stated that the country will not use Russian vaccines such as Sputnik V, calling them "Russia's hybrid weapon against Ukraine."

 

Kiev and Moscow have been under control since the annexation of Crimea by Ukraine in 2014 and its involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

 

"Registration of vaccines, ... the production of which was carried out in a state recognized by the Ukrainian parliament as an aggressor state, is prohibited," the decree says.

 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said last week that Kiev has received 20 million doses of the vaccine from the Indian Serum Institute and the global COVAX scheme, and that the government hopes to begin vaccinating its 41 million population in mid-February.

 

In December, he agreed to buy 1.9 million doses of Sinovac Biotech in China for $ 18 per picture through a Ukrainian reseller. Ukraine also expects to receive 1.2 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine from Poland.

 

Ukrainian investigators have launched an investigation into whether the government was buying the vaccines at high prices. Health Minister Maxim Stepanov said on Wednesday that the government is open and transparent about procurement.

 

30.100-year-old man charged with Holocaust atrocities

Upvotes: 249

German prosecutors accused the 100-year-old former SS concentration camp guard of aiding the murder of 3,518 people.

 

According to the Neuruppin Prosecutor's Office in Brandenburg, the man is accused of witnessing the "knowingly and voluntarily" murder of prisoners in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, north of Berlin, from January 1942 to February 1945.

The man's name is not disclosed due to German privacy laws.

 

The charges include involvement in the execution of Soviet prisoners of war in 1942 and support and incitement to the killing of detainees using the poisonous gas Zyklon B, as well as other shootings and murders of prisoners by creating and maintaining hostile conditions in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

 

Sachsenhausen was founded in 1936. It is estimated that of the roughly 200,000 inmates who passed through it, about 100,000 died there. During World War II, the number of prisoners in the camp ranged from 11,000 to 48,000.

 

Prosecutors believe the man could face trial despite his advanced age, Cyril Clement, Neuruppin's senior prosecutor, told CNN.

 

Clement told CNN that the Neuruppin District Court consulted with a forensic psychiatrist and found that the man could attend the trial, albeit only for a few hours a day, with interruptions.

 

Now the court is considering the possibility of continuing the trial. The defendant first has the opportunity to answer the indictment.

 

According to the Central Office for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes, German prosecutors are investigating several more cases related to the concentration camps in Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen and Stutthof.

 

Just last week, the former secretary of the Stutthof concentration camp was charged with complicity in the murder of 10,000 people. Itzejo's prosecutors did not name the woman, but a statement said they charged her with “aiding and abetting murder in more than 10,000 cases,” as well as complicity in attempted murder.

 

Last year, the Hamburg District Court sentenced former concentration camp guard Bruno D. to two years probation. It turned out that he worked as an SS guard in Stutthof and, according to the court, helped and supported the murder of 5,232 people there.

 

Approximately 6 million Jews were killed in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of Roma and people with physical disabilities or learning difficulties were also killed.