Before I was born, my grandfather dropped dead of a heart attack

Common enough story, except

They were visiting family in Poland, we’re American

And this was the 1980s

So the problem was how to get a corpse back to the US.

Embalming was not common in Poland at the time, not sure what the current situation is there, but in this case it was kind of needed. Shipping something the size of a casket across the atlantic on short notice is kind of a lot to figure out for normal people in the best of times, but especially tricky for a bereaved family, in a foreign country, where they barely speak the language, and a whole host of Cold war political bullshit, and this was no small feat.

So they managed to find one of the few local funeral homes who were able to embalm him

And stuffed him into the cheapest wooden coffin they could acquire to ship him back.

And of course, there were some customs hold-ups that delayed things to make sure they weren’t smuggling anything back with him I suppose.

I believe the whole process took a few weeks.

Luckily American money went a long way in Poland at the time. My family is not wealthy, but they were basically treated like celebrities there, flash a little American cash and you were bumped to the front of the line and got preferential treatment for everything, and from the US perspective, everything was dirt cheap.

A couple stories to illustrate that- one day they’re out in Warsaw with their relative Wojtek, and they’re looking for a place to eat. My grandfather spied a nice-looking restaurant. They go to the door and Wojtek is told that they wouldn’t be able to seat them. My grandfather gets a bit angry and points out that the restaurant was almost empty. When they found out they had Americans with them they were welcomed in with open arms.

My grandfather ordered a steak, Wojtek got a bit of sticker shock seeing the menu and ordered a hot dog. When my grandfather found out that’s what he ordered, he called the waiter back over and told them that Wojtek would also have a steak. He said it was too late and they’d already started the hot dog, so my grandfather said to wrap them up and they’d take them to go, and ordered the steak. A steak dinner there for the whole group, probably around 4-6 people, cost peanuts for an American at the time, but the Polish relatives they were staying with had been saving up things like sugar rations for weeks or months in preparation for hosting my family, and steak was definitely not on their regular menu.

There’s also the story of when Wojtek visited the US (coincidentally at the exact same time as the USSR fell apart, but that’s another long story) and literally broke down in tears at the sight of an American grocery store. I know the grocery store they would have went to, it was not a big or particularly impressive store, today it is a kind of small-ish CVS.

Another time while in Poland (they visited several times back in the day) my grandmother went to get her hair done while she was there. She worked as a hair dresser for most of her life, so while she was waiting in line she was watching them cut hair, and pointed out one lady and said that she wanted her to do her hair. She was told that’s not how things worked there and that shed get whoever was available when it was her turn. Until she flashed some American cash and they bumped her up to the front of the line so she could have her hair cut by the hair dresser she wanted.

Anyway, circling back to my dead grandfather, they eventually got his body back to the US, stuffed him into a nicer casket, had a funeral, and there he is to the ground to this day.

But the story doesn’t quite end there. What became of the casket they shipped him back in?

It sat in the funeral homes attic for a couple decades. It was cheap, but it wasn’t a bad casket, just not what’s in-demand for the American funeral industry, and believe it or not, there’s not a lot of demand (or supply for that matter) for second-hand caskets.

Then one day, some guy, who actually happens to be a second cousin or something of mine, decides he wants an actual coffin to use as a Halloween decoration. So he calls around to the local funeral homes to see what they can do for him.

He calls up this place, and they basically say “we have just the thing for you” and so that’s where that is now.

I have no doubts in my mind that trump and Epstein were as good friends as two narcissistic assholes are capable of being.

But it’s also pretty damn clear to me that trump isn’t exactly the letter-writing type.

I suspect how this all played out is that Maxwell was putting together this book for Epstein, and reached out to trump for his contribution

And so trump had some lackey throw together something appropriately sleazy for it and just signed it wherever he was told to sign.

And I don’t think that’s even just a trump thing, I’m pretty sure just about any celebrity, politician, etc. has staff whose job is to answer mail for them.

And he’s too much of a moron and narcissistic asshole to say that, so instead he’s going all-in on it being forged.

But if he were someone with a half functioning brain, that’s all he would need to say “I am a very busy man, so I can’t remember every piece of mail I sent 20 years ago, I probably had an intern write it for me, and I just signed where they told me to, I probably didn’t even read it, I trusted my staff to write a good letter because I have the best people working for me”

And boom totally plausible, keeps the whole thing at arms-length from himself, and probably pretty damn close to the truth.

I figure you have 2 main options

1 is to either cut out the sides of the old panel and reuse them there or to fabricate a new part (3d printing, like someone else mentioned, might be a good choice, or maybe something you could hack together with some sheet metal or plastic and make a new piece)

2. Fill it with bondo, sand it down, paint it black.

If you don’t mind getting into the weeds here a bit

A “heart attack” is normally understood to be a myocardial infarction, where blood flow in the coronary arteries is blocked leading to damage to the heart muscle.

And the most common cause of cardiac arrest is arrhythmia, and most specifically ventricular fibrilation (v-fib)

Now that damage to the heart from a heart attack can and frequently does cause v-fib and other arrhythmias, which can lead to a cardiac arrest, either relatively immediately, or further down the line from that heart attack.

But there’s a whole host of other conditions, risk factors, and just plain bad luck that can also cause them.

Picking apart what percent of those arrhythmias are attributable to a heart attack vs those that were caused by other issues isn’t something that I’m willing and maybe not even able to do as a layperson, so I won’t begin to speculate on that.

But that’s kind of the root of my issue here. A lot of people just kind of casually lump all sorts of heart issues together into the same basket. We all have hearts beating away in our chests, and they’re pretty damn important if you want to go on living, so it’s best if we all have some decent level of understanding of what these terms mean and how to treat, manage, recognize, and avoid these issues, and I think that just kind of casually throwing terms around like heart attack, heart disease, heart failure, arrhythmia, cardiac arrest, etc. like they’re interchangeable does a lot of harm to people being able to properly understand what’s going on with this weird pumpy muscle thing in our chests.

I never expect an apology when I’ve been wronged

However, an apology is a necessary step towards rebuilding whatever trust/respect/relationship we had prior to that wrongdoing.

And it is just a step, on its own an apology is just meaningless words unless it is backed up by concrete actions to show that you do intend to do better and try to set things right.

The point of an apology, as far as I’m concerned, isn’t just what it says on the surface, a statement that you’re “sorry” or that you “feel bad,” or however you choose to phrase it.

It’s not about you and how you feel, you’re not the one who’s been wronged.

But the deeper meaning, in a sincere apology, is that you’re acknowledging that you fucked up, and that it was wrong, and that you will try to do better going forward.

We can continue without an apology, but things will not be as they were. I will not be able to trust you as I have before. Even if you seem to have improved, I may still find myself suspicious of your motives.

The form that the apology takes can vary, it doesn’t need necessary to be an explicit written or verbal apology in all cases, actions, as they say, speak louder than words, but in some way it needs to be made clear that you have acknowledged what you have done, understand that it was wrong and why, and intend to do improve.

My wife and I work different schedules. on the rare day off that were both home, she’s often out of the house when I wake up. She’s not great at replying to texts. I never know when she’s going to be home, and usually have no clue what she’s out doing or where.

But I know who she’s doing while she’s gone- no one. Because I trust my wife. I know who she is as a person, I know what our relationship is like.

I have no particular desire to know her location at all times. I’m sure if I asked, she’d share it with me, and I’d do the same for her. I might occasionally do that when I’m off hiking or something in case there’s an emergency, but half the time I wouldn’t have a signal anyway.

We are two humans with our own lives. Those lives are very intertwined, but we’re both allowed to go off and have our own adventures, occasionally some secrets, and we don’t need to know where each other is 24/7

I work in 911 dispatch

Back when I was still in training I delivered my first baby, was damn glad to still have my trainer hanging out over my shoulder for that.

It was almost a perfectly by the book, no complications delivery

Except that they had their doula on another line giving competing instructions to me.

In general unless there are complications, our instructions are pretty much the classic birth position, woman on her back, knees bent, legs spread

And the doula had her on all fours, which is something we instruct for certain complications

But again, everything they were telling me was that there were no complications.

So eventually I basically had to say something like “our instructions are to have her on her back, I can’t make you listen to me, but I have to give these instructions, so I’m going to proceed as if she’s on her back”

Phrased maybe a bit more diplomatically

I have no idea what position she was actually in when the baby finally popped out, but he was healthy, so that’s all that matters I suppose.

And they made me do a photo op with the parents and baby. I don’t like babies. Not much of a fan of having my picture taken either. Not my favorite day at work. I’d rather take a call for a shooting. No one makes you take a picture with a shooting victim.

911 dispatch if we want to count it

Look, stress and adrenaline and all of that are a hell of a drug

Not to mention actual drugs

And people have all manner of mental health issues

And I get that

And obviously since I work the job I do, I can handle stress and crazy bullshit better than most, so my own standards are all kinds of skewed

And I really try not to hold that against my callers

But holy crap am I glad that there are usually miles between me and them because if they were right in front of me I might strangle some of them.

It’s usually not even the real frequent flyer problem callers that get me. Don’t get me wrong, they’re obnoxious, but at least I know that 99 out of 100 times, there’s no real emergency, and they are clearly not in their right minds so they really can’t help it. They’re almost an enjoyable distraction from all of the people who should know better and just won’t not be an uncooperative belligerent asshole who refuses to listen to anything we say.

That, or numerous other health problems, his body was pretty much wrecked from years of wrestling and such even without the steroids, he’s had drug and alcohol issues, and the dude was in his 70s, it’s not exactly unheard of for even relatively healthy people his age to just kind of keel over.

I don’t think there’s anything particularly interesting to his death, he was an unhealthy old guy, it’s not in the least bit surprising that he died. But “cardiac arrest” in articles is a personal pet peeve of mine. It says absolutely nothing about the cause of death, and people who don’t understand what it means tend to automatically think “oh, he had a heart attack” when that’s often not the case. It tells you basically nothing that a headline of something like “Joe Schmo, famous taxidermist, dead at 69” hasn’t already told you, and can be kind of misleading.

I work in 911 dispatch, the codes and policies and such used by different agencies will vary from one agency to another, I’ve entered calls for a “cardiac arrest” for countless different causes

Cardiac arrest just means your heart stopped beating, which is pretty much the textbook definition of death.

That’s basically like saying they’re dead because they died.

The interesting thing we want to know is what caused the cardiac arrest. Any time you see “cardiac arrest” in an article, it means that they either don’t know or don’t want to say the cause of death.

A heart attack can cause cardiac arrest, so could an overdose, or falling and hitting your head, or getting shot in the face.

Chick fila a and hobby lobby for sure

Target will get a bit of leeway from me.

The other two are run by people who have actively funneled money towards shit like conversion therapy

Target, unless I’ve missed something, just kind of pulled their DEI initiatives, so while they’re not doing anything to make the situation better for LGBTQ people, they’re not trying to actively make shit worse for them either.

Also nothing chick fila a or hobby lobby sells is particularly essential, you don’t need craft supplies and fast food. Target at least sells basic essentials like clothes, groceries, medications, etc. and sometimes they’re the only or most affordable place in town to get those things, so I can’t exactly begrudge people for shopping there for those things unless I know there’s a better alternative.

If you can, you shouldn’t shop at target of course, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Presumably you’re browsing english-language Lemmy

Most people are going to want to converse in their native/primary language, and by numbers that means a lot of Americans who are, of course, primarily concerned with American issues

There’s also the fact that America is a huge player on the international stage, so American issues can have a lot of repercussions in other countries

And if you haven’t noticed, America has kind of a lot of shit going on and there is a lot to talk about there.

Also, everything on that Amazon page seems to be “shipped and sold” by various 3rd parties. I don’t really understand the inner workings of how being a seller on Amazon works, but I’m not convinced that WSU actually has anything to do with that page, at the very least it doesn’t seem like you’re getting your cheese directly from them when you go through Amazon and there’s some extra companies adding markups and taking a slice of the pie along the way.

Maybe try their actual website

Not sure where you’re seeing $70, price is $33/30oz can

It sounds crazy, but it is a legit cheese, it’s even won some awards. It’s basically a wheel of cheese that happens to be packaged in a can.

Washington State University has pretty big agriculture and food science programs, so they make cheese, and back in the 40s the us government gave them money to research how to put cheese in a can, so they’ve been doing it ever since.

Possibly one of the best cheddars in the world is from the US (and comes in a can)

Cougar Gold

I’ve had it, it’s really good, and it keeps basically forever in the refrigerator, arguably getting better as it ages

Temperatures in fahrenheit, because that’s what I think in.

Winter should be cold and snowy, I’d like there to be about a foot of snow on the ground at all times between December and February.

Spring should be about in the upper 60s-mid 70s during the day, and rain maybe a couple times a week.

Summer, I don’t ever want the temperature above the 80s, and humidity should be low with a nice breeze. I also want the occasional really good thunder storm, often enough to keep us out of any sort of drought or burn ban, but not so much that we have flooding issues.

Fall I’d mostly like to be in about the 50s, cooling off towards the end of the season so that it’s in about the lower 40s or upper 30s for deer season

I’m at home in a town about 10-15 miles from the town and hospital I was born in (as the crow flies.)

And I’ve lived the majority of my life in a town that’s probably about another 3 miles from there.

If I were asked to name my home town, I wouldn’t give the name of the town with the hospital, I’d give the town I grew up in.

But it’s all close enough together that all three towns share a certain sense of hominess for me, I have childhood memories from all 3 towns.

We all speak, more-or-less, the same local dialect with the same slang (there’s a couple shibboleths and bits of local lore that are unique to one part of the county over another) We enjoy the same local foods, root for the same sports teams, attend a lot of the same big local events, etc.

I proudly, and without a hint of irony, tell people that my ancestry is from that town I grew up in.

Yes, if you go back 3+ generations, you’ll find that all of my ancestors came from various European countries. Little bits of that has trickled down to the current generation, like a certain fondness for pierogi and kielbasa from my Polish side.

But that’s also part of my local culture, those are fairly common food items here too.

I don’t speak any of the languages my ancestors spoke, I’ve never set foot in those countries. Even my family name hasn’t really carried over, my great great grandfather changed the name after having already lived here for some time under the original Italian name. It’s a pretty unusual anglicization that barely resembles the original name, and anywhere in the world you may happen to encounter someone with my name, you know they can trace their heritage back to my home town.

And if you try to go much further back from that, the trail kind of goes cold. You can kind of make some educated guesses at which regions in their various old countries the different branches of my family came from, but not much more than that, except on the aforementioned polish side, some of those ancestors were a little more recent immigrants (though still well-before my time) and we have some communication with some relatives in Poland. Nothing regular, but once in a while someone on either side reaches out to see how things are going, and we know enough that if we really wanted to we could probably track each other down if we ever ended up in each other’s countries.

But overall, my family history pretty much begins with my great-great(or so) grandparents arriving in America and settling in my hometown.

Thank you, and you’re not the first person to say you’ve enjoyed my writing. I do like to think I’ve had some interesting experiences and that I have a certain knack for storytelling.

I tend to consider myself more of a storyteller or conversationalist than an author though. Sitting down to write a book that maybe someone somewhere will someday read doesn’t really appeal to me, and I don’t think my stories necessarily hold up as well on their own without the support of a conversation around them, to some extent I’m usually crafting how I tell stories as a response to something someone said or asked.

But if you do enjoy what I have to say and how I say it, by all means creep on my profile here a bit, I won’t pretend everything there is gold, but there’s a couple things mixed in I’m a little bit proud of. This is pretty much the only place you’re going to find me online.

EDIT: Lemmy search is terrible, so good luck finding anything, but for a couple highlights, somewhere in my comment history I have a short history of the Falkland Islands that I’m pretty proud of, a few interesting stories from my job as a 911 dispatcher as well as a long rant about alarm companies that some people seemed to have enjoyed, and a lot of thoughts about life, the universe, and everything.