Have you ever wondered what it is like to learn how to run a prison, you should check out this video:
This Bureau of Prisons video has become public in an unusual way. It was part of a huge grab of "free" public records that was obtained then made much more accessible by two activists. The story is told here, and is close to my heart because it involves criticism of the enormously clunky PACER system, which contains all federal case filings. The activists decided to download all of the recent cases on PACER in order to make them more accessible. They were in the process of doing that when the federal courts shut them down. Fascinating stuff.
They also obtained government videos that they've collected into "FedFlix,"
a growing archive of many films originally produced by the federal government, which he’s been uploading to the Internet Archive and a YouTube channel.
Tis a pity we don't make things like this in the U.S. Neun = 9, Mal = times, Klug = smart. So Susi Neunmalklug translates into Susie Smartypants. Yeah. Ask a linguist or etymologist about the evolution of vernacular.
So, imagine a religion teacher coming in to your class and explaining where we come from to kids who were raised to know better.
Anyway, this video is wa-ay cute, and has English subtitles.
Tip of the mustache to Pharyngula
At the Red Cross, we get lots of mail.
Mostly it's our own reply paid envelopes with cheques in them, sent in response to a quarterly mailout. In a time of crisis (like now: redcross.org.au) it's all kinds of envelopes from all kinds of people with lots of different stamps for me to harvest and decorate my cubicle with. Sometimes, amidst the cheques and postal orders, we might also get a letter or card from an old digger or Red Cross lady with a "The War" story, or perhaps a tale of how the good ol' Red Cross came through for them when they were in a POW camp. We also get people complaining about how much mail we send them because it must cost us so much money to send all those letters (the complainants usually use our own reply paid envelopes - or call our 1800 number - to do so, which, um, costs us money). Occasionally we even get white-hot rage and four-lettered, multicoloured profanity in response to such a mailout (that's for another adults-only post).
Even less frequently, we get poetry. The following - well, I guess you could call it a poem as I'm not sure what else it should be called - came in a card attached to a donation . . .
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