Eventually, Hecker’s inclusion on the 2018 roster produced the most serious ramification for him. A member of the US military went to law enforcement and reported that he was a teenager in 1975 when Hecker, then a staff member at his high school, strangled him unconscious in a church bell tower – pretending to teach him a wrestling move – then sodomized him.

The archdiocese of New Orleans waited to turn over Hecker’s complete personnel file until June 2023, when it received a subpoena from the local district attorney. Three months later, a grand jury empaneled by the DA charged Hecker with aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature and theft.

He’s now claiming he’s not competent to face the charges because he has short-term memory loss. If you read the second article, that doesn’t sound believable (scroll down to number 5).

At the deposition itself, Trahant bluntly asked Hecker: “Do you have a problem remembering things from 15 minutes ago?”

“No,” Hecker answered.

Yeah. Business Insider had a good long read on that. I think it was posted before, but it’s worth reading.

In addition to their financial struggles, all of the hospitals shared three things in common. They all served low-income communities that suffered from a lack of access to healthcare. They were all owned at various points by for-profit investors, including leading private-equity firms like Cerberus, Leonard Green, and Apollo. And in a move that stripped the hospitals of one of their prime assets, the owners had sold the land beneath the facilities to a little-known real-estate investor called Medical Properties Trust. MPT, which has purchased some $16 billion of hospital real estate over the past two decades, now bills itself as one of the world’s largest owners of hospital beds.

For many of the hospitals, the deals proved disastrous. Once their real estate was sold to MPT, they were forced to pay rent on what had always been their own property. That added to the massive debt burdens already placed on the hospitals by their for-profit owners, deepening their financial woes. It also deprived Americans of desperately needed healthcare and put lives at risk — all while enriching some of the world’s wealthiest investors.

But I occasionally, like once a month or less, run a short load if they really need me to. That makes me still exempt and is still legal for them to do.

That could be illegal, depending on what state you’re in. I don’t think it’s right that laws about this can vary so much from state to state, but the difference can be night and day.

Even if you’re in a state that’s better about protecting workers, you have to be ready to put up a fight. It can take years, and it’s not uncommon for a company to keep doing the same thing after the case is over.

The ones that interest you the most will be easiest to stick with. I find things just through my general interests and poking around.

Favorite music genre? Listen to bands from different countries and see how they sound. TV shows, movies, and documentaries from other countries are another big one. Listen to the original language, see if it sounds interesting, maybe read a little about it.

Or maybe you know someone who you’d like to be able to talk with in their language. It could be anything. Pick one or two things to try and you’ll get a feel for what you like.

Oh yeah, the yellow European style butter was a revelation when I found out about it. It tastes way better and is less watery than the pale American butter.

I never heard of filtered milk. Milk is milk for the most part, but once I made the mistake of buying it on clearance. Grabbed it without looking because the price for a normal gallon freaked me out. It wasn’t spoiled, but it was super watery and had a weird color.

Some people do, yeah. I’ve always used stainless steel cause it’s what I had. Takes a little practice to get it to not stick, but after that it’s fine. I heat the empty pan on medium, medium high until it’s pretty hot. If you add a drop of water, it should bead up and roll. Then add the oil, wait until it shimmers, and add the eggs.

Enameled cast iron is nice too. It’s non-stick and not as heavy as a regular cast iron.

All your basic staples: salt, flour, oil, sugar, pasta, pasta, milk, eggs

It depends. Cheap salt is just fine. And flour, unless you’re into baking. But some things can make a difference and you don’t necessarily have to pay a lot more for it.

Pasta, for example. Bronze cut pasta absorbs sauce a lot better than “normal” pasta. It looks dull, rough, and pale as opposed to shiny and smooth. It usually only costs a buck or two more. I find it’s a big step up taste and texture-wise.

Or butter. The ones without natural flavor taste better. Sometimes it’s the store brand that doesn’t have added flavor.

And eggs. Orange yolks are way better than the pale yellow ones. But those you do have to shell out for.

It's colloquial and you'll hear it when people talk about making food. Like if you're making a sandwich. You put mayo on the bread, then you put the cheese, then you add meat and lettuce or whatever.

It's kind of like "on" is implied and you don't bother to say it. I just mentioned it, so I don't need to say it again. That's how it feels to me anyway.

I could see myself saying "First you put mayo, then you put cheese." That would be like if someone was standing next to me, watching me make the sandwich. They can see exactly where I'm putting things. But normally you do want to specify where you're putting something.

Browsing Lemmy and kbin. There’s lots of interesting stuff when you sort by new. Today’s unexpected find was banjo music with duck sounds.

Once in a while, I try my hand at translating.

It can be to limit how much vacation time the company has to pay out on separation, or to limit how much “liability” for vacation pay they have on the books at any given time. If your employees get 5 days of vacation a year, use it or lose it, you don’t have to deal with someone who (the horror!) has built up 2 weeks and wants to use it all at once.

There are no state or federal laws that give employees a right to paid vacation time. Only 10 states require the company to pay out unused vacation time when you leave (CA, CO, IL, IN, LA, MA, ME, ND, NE, RI). In most of those states, use it or lose it policies are illegal. Everywhere else, the company policy basically decides if it gets paid out or not.

I looked through the Laws of LT and didn’t see any mention of a license or restrictions on how people can use the translations that are posted. They don’t allow posting other people’s translations without credit. That’s the closest thing I saw. I checked the FAQ too.

If you do a search for “creative commons” site:lyricstranslate.com, you’ll see some people who add a note that their translation is licensed under Creative Commons. Not everyone does that.

I have to say, LyricsTranslate is the best site I’ve found for song translations. It actually HAS translations, unlike a lot of other sites that show up in the Google results but don’t actually have anything. The quality is usually good, plus it lets you read both versions side by side. I always get happy to find translations there, especially from Romanian to English. Those are pretty rare. So if you’ve posted there already…thank you!

I think part of it is because of pricing software like RealPage.

On a summer day last year, a group of real estate tech executives gathered at a conference hall in Nashville to boast about one of their company’s signature products: software that uses a mysterious algorithm to help landlords push the highest possible rents on tenants.

“Never before have we seen these numbers,” said Jay Parsons, a vice president of RealPage, as conventiongoers wandered by. Apartment rents had recently shot up by as much as 14.5%, he said in a video touting the company’s services. Turning to his colleague, Parsons asked: What role had the software played?

“I think it’s driving it, quite honestly,” answered Andrew Bowen, another RealPage executive. “As a property manager, very few of us would be willing to actually raise rents double digits within a single month by doing it manually.”

I lived in a building that used this software. In 6-7 years, rent went from around $1200 to about $2,000. More and more apartments stayed empty. They kept raising prices during the pandemic. Surprise surprise, a tent city popped up down the street. A couple people died there.

It sounds like a poor attempt at money grubbing and a ham-handed way to try to keep subs from doing a repeat of John Oliver, red pandas, and Christian minecraft servers.

If you have shill mods and users who have to spend corporate bucks to get a say in what the sub is about…that’s totally not putting your thumb on the scale or anything.

Honestly, probably not too much. Eat some of my favorite foods, write letters to people I care about, listen to my favorite music. Hopefully be able to enjoy nature one last time. And maybe ingest some mind-altering substances.