Full lives

Dammit…must’ve gotten dusty in here all of a sudden:

2A2F0E0200000578-3144803-image-a-2_1435874534767The dying embrace of husband and wife who were married for 75 years and died just hours apart as they held hands in bed

A poignant photo has emerged which shows an elderly couple who were married for 75 years fulfilling their final wishes to die together.

Jeanette Toczko, 96, and her 95-year-old husband, Alexander Toczko, from San Diego, California, died just hours apart as they held hands in bed.

The pair spent their lives in love after becoming boyfriend and girlfriend when they were only eight years old.

But several weeks ago, Mr Toczko suffered a broken hip in a fall and was left bed-bound. A local hospice delivered a special bed to his home, which staff pushed up next to his beloved wife’s bed.

As Mr Toczko’s condition quickly declined, Mrs Toczko’s own health took a turn for the worse. The couple had always said they wished to die ‘in their own bed, holding hands, in each other’s arms’.

…and that’s exactly what happened.  The rest of us should be as lucky.

The Revolution was a mistake! (Score: -1, Troll)

v6mzo3Really?  They chose to publish this rot going into the Fourth of July weekend?

Peak Vox: The American Revolution was a mistake, you know

Generally, I’m not one to hammer on outlets as a whole, although some — Salon comes to mind — seem to use trolling people with ridiculous premises as their entire marketing strategy. Vox has its moments like this, although they also recently hired the estimable Jon Allen as a political editor to shore up their credibility. However, it’s essays like today’s “3 Reasons the American Revolution was a Mistake” two days before Independence Day that provide most of Vox’s reputation for intellectual heft. Well, it’s those and that West Bank to Gaza Bridge that inspired Sonny Bunch to offer “The Year in Voxfails” at the Free Beacon, along with the supposedly longest winter night ever that wasn’t.

At least this essay from Dylan Matthews is more of an opinion piece, and Dylan’s entitled to his opinions and to write about them, even if they are more or less spun out of pure fantasy. That’s what this is, of course — a series of improbable what-ifs that ignore historical realities and contexts for simplistic assumptions, built around a trollish central argument guaranteed to get clicks. It’s practically old-school undergrad blogging at its most pure, and only needssome Rule 5 imagery to complete the experience.

 

What’s wrong with people?

The feds are recommending probation and community service for this scumbag.  Maybe as part of his community service, he can scrub the urinals at the local American Legion and VFW halls, and make sure they’re stocked up on Jane Fonda urinal targets:

Rhode Island cemetery worker used veterans’ headstones as flooring, prosecutors say

Federal prosecutors say an employee of the Rhode Island Veterans’ Cemetery has agreed to plead guilty to the theft of granite grave markers and other cemetery items.

As part of his plea agreement filed in federal court, Kevin Maynard will plead guilty to one count of theft of government property. Court filings indicate the government will recommend the 59-year-old Charlestown resident get one year of probation and serve 500 hours of community service.

Prosecutors said that during an April 23 visit to Maynard’s home, investigators from the Veterans Administration and the Rhode Island State Police found at least 150 grave markers being used as flooring in a shed and two garages.

Feds.  Woodchipper.  Some assembly required.

Woodchippers…they’re not just for rogue judges anymore:

THEY DIDN’T JUST TWEET A PHOTO

As Ed Driscoll reports below, when TSA flack Lisa Farbstein tweeted a photo of the contents of a passenger’s luggage–$75,000 in cash–with a snarky comment, the gratuitous invasion of privacy generated quite a bit of public backlash. But the story gets worse. The TSA took a photo, but other federal agents took the money.

The Puppy Blender then refers to the following:

Why the TSA posted a photo of a passenger’s cash-filled luggage on Twitter

The photo, from the Richmond airport, shows a passenger’s luggage containing $75,000 in cash. Farbstein asks, “Is this how you’d transport it?” Most people would not, but there is nothing illegal about simply checking a bag containing $75,000, or carrying it with you on the plane. Passengers aren’t under any obligation to report large sums of cash unless they’re traveling internationally, though the TSA recommends that passengers consider asking for a private screening.

[…]

In this case, the cash was seized by a federal agency, most likely the Drug Enforcement Administration, according to Richmond airport spokesman Troy Bell. “I don’t believe the person was issued a summons or a citation,” he said. “The traveler was allowed to continue on his way.”

If true, that would make this incident just the latest case of civil asset forfeiture at the nation’s major transportation hubs. In recent months several high-profile stories have surfaced of passengers who had large sums of cash seized by the DEA, including a young man at an Amtrak stop, a college student at the Cincinnati airport, and a nail salon owner in New York. While the DEA took the cash in these cases under suspicion of its involvement in drug trafficking, no drug charges been filed in any of the cases.

Penn & Teller called this years ago

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC3CZBDz7Wg]

Why Recycling Is A Waste Of Time

The secret is out: recycling isn’t working, because it was never really supposed to.

The Washington Post reported that more recycling companies, including Waste Management, are turning away from recycling, as the enterprise has ‘become’ totally unprofitable. They place the blame on the (well-meaning) masses who acted like apes when they were given larger recycling bins.

The article explains:

By pushing to increase recycling rates with bigger and bigger bins — while demanding almost no sorting by consumers — the recycling stream has become increasingly polluted and less valuable, imperiling the economics of the whole system. . . Residents have also begun experimenting, perhaps with good intentions, tossing into recycling bins almost anything rubber, metal or plastic: garden hoses, clothes hangers, shopping bags, shoes, Christmas lights. That was exactly the case last year, when the District replaced residents’ 32-gallon bins with ones that are 50 percent larger.

While many are throwing shade at those big glue bins, the truth is, much of consumer recycling has been a waste of time all along. The article goes onto explain that glass probably shouldn’t have ever been recycled. It’s heavy and breaks easily, contaminating the rest of the materials in the pile. Most of it has no value, and often costs money to haul away. The stuff that is valuable is “trucked to landfills as daily cover to bury the smell and trap gases.”