• 4 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 28th, 2023

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  • Oh no, that depends on the bus. Long trips, the guards want comfort. Those buses usually have AC, maybe not pointed at the prisoners but at least the bus is cool in general. Short trips though, where the guards are up front and prisoners in the back and separate? Total crap shoot. I know this from some personal experience in the NYS system.


  • Having been in chains on a couple of these buses during my life, I can say this much from personal experience.

    In NY, you get food when your prison bus ride is more then a few hours long. We would get a paper bag with two ‘sandwiches’, a couple greasy cookies/biscuts ( I couldn’t tell for sure), and two little cups of juice. The ‘sandwiches’ where two slices of bread, some mystery deli meat, and some cheese. I do not recommend trying the recipe with the ingredients they use.

    Didn’t matter how far you where going, that was one bag per trip per person. The trips going long distance where on converted or custom built tour buses. The seats are like what you’ll find in any city bus, hard with a layer of fabric over it for the barest bit of cusion. These prison buses usually had a bathroom, but you where told it was for peeing only.

    There is anouther factor as well. For the vast majority of non-guard riders, you are chained to another person not of your choosing, for the duration of the ride. Even if one of you needs to use the small single occupant bathroom. I was, in a sense, lucky. I am a large person, and the handcuff-style leg chains would not fit on me, no matter how they tried my legs where just too large and thick and only bone or muscle, so not squishy like I saw some guys who had mostly thick fat on their legs. So instead, I got what the guards jokingly called the “elephant chains”, just a single chain passed around my ankles and padlocked shut so I couldn’t get out. But, it meant I didn’t have a ‘partner’. I could have used the bathroom by myself (although I didn’t, since in handcuffs I didn’t think anyone would aim very well) and I had a seat all to myself, since everyone else was already forced to buddy up.

    There was no entertainment, but while the windows are very heavily tinted, you can see out of them from the inside, so at least it’s possible to watch what’s going by. That is either a blessing or a curse, depending on the person.

    And yes, we where told no talking.




  • Switch to 2x4, make sure the ones on the bottom (known as ‘runners’) are standing on edge. Then use 3" coarse thread screws to attach the slats. We build them like that at my workplace to ship and store drums of material that are 1600 - 8000 lbs per pallet. So unless your machines are more then 2000lbs per square foot, you should be fine. The important part is to mark the center of gravity, NOT the center of the machine. As long as the pallet is lifted at CoG, it should move around just fine.







  • The logic of this is nonexistent. An argument could be made very convincingly that cars are dangerous to allow in the hands of criminals. 2 tons of metal, well known for and capable of ending a life, with the ability to aid criminal enterprises and avoidance of law enforcement. So should car sales now require a criminal background check? All this would do is further disenfranchise convicted felons, regardless of the actual crime committed, and create new difficulties for a group that includes a very high percentage of people already proven to give no shits about the law who will find and exploit ways to continue activities despite any laws attempting to restrict them.


  • I’ve already said I don’t pay for anything in Lemmy. If by support you mean, do I contribute code, servers or bandwidth to Lemmy as a project? No, because I don’t have those things to contribute in this field. I only know enough code to announce “Hello World”, I don’t own or operate a server farm or service, and I don’t have enough bandwidth to be able to contribute a reasonable amount to a project. However, I think your argument is starting to lose focus. I have not been advocating leaving social media of all kinds, that would be hypocritical since I’m posting this here after all, I have been advocating for avoiding the use of overly monetized platforms. I also noted that I don’t have an objection to paying for a service I find desirable. I pay for a streaming service for my household, and occasionally purchase apps that I find important. However, I think the over use of ads and subscriptions have polluted the market of software and services. Of course open-source projects, like Lemmy, are going to develop slower then a corporate alternative. But we wouldn’t be here if we all wanted the corporate alternative, would we? I can’t speak for your choice, of course, but I for one use Lemmy because I left Reddit. I use Linux because I prefer it over Windows and despise Mac, and I use Raspberry Pi’s because I prefer to self-host my photo back ups rather then use Google.

    Twitter has become a shit show, not unlike watching Facebook devolve back in the early 2000s. I prefer not to use it because I have better options in life for my time, not because I think I’m better then those who do use it. My original comment was a sufficient explanation of this philosophy, I think. I’m not calling for such extreme measures as cutting all social media from use, I’m reminding with my own example to be cognizant of one’s time and use of services that are not under one’s own control. That can be Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Lemmy, Mastodon, Twitch, Youtube, or any of the numerous other platforms that are available today. Don’t avoid the path if it’s really the one you want to walk, but be aware of your choice and know you have one. That’s all I’m saying.



  • When I said there where other options for my time, I meant if I don’t like the service’s conditions, I can choose to not use it at all and do something else with my time. As an example, I don’t like Facebook, mostly due to its privacy violations and seeking disregard for security. So, I don’t use it. I spend my time playing games, or visiting a library, or pursuing a hobby. Facebook is unnecessary to my social life or my existence.