> Maybe it’s just me, but I find it kind of sad to think that you got buried in a grave with no headstone, no marker, no indication of who you were.
I appreciate this melancholy - even a compassionate wistfulness.
Conversely though - For me, it just feels part of an Ozymandian futility. If the suffering of dying + the suffering of others' grief are removed from the equation, it feels like there is an elegance to just dissolve back to the environment without a struggle, in a certain graceful way.
A headstone in that context is a 'struggle'.
To me, graves are for the living and never the dead.
> If truth is defined as beliefs which lead one to make decisions that cause you/your society to thrive
This is 'metaphorical truth' to be precise.
But it's only a part of the virality of memes, not the whole.
Propagation can occur not just due to usefulness, but to other factors such as simplicity/replicability, human susceptibility / 'key in a lock' etc.
If survival was purely metaphorical truth, then all surviving lifeforms would be 'the most true' (including viruses being 'true' to us). Which can be argued, at a philosophical level - But then we've expanded the definition so much as to lose relevant meaning at the pragmatic level.
I suppose I should clarify that I am aware that the incident was from '82 and that LDTs are no longer admissible in many jurisdictions, and new legislation came in for tamper-proofing medicine which affected not just the US.
But regardless, argument being "things haven't moved on enough - lie detectors are still used in some places, people still misinterpret what they are, and our supply chain still only discourages, rather than prevents, mischief"
> While in custody, she took a lie detector test, which revealed deception in two key responses[...]
It did not. It revealed that the police failed to trick a confession out of her using pseudo-science.
> James Lewis refused a polygraph.
Sensible move - Especially when journalists interpret LDTs as per above.
> They tried enlarging the pharmacy surveillance photo, but the bigger it got, the grainier it got.
What did Fahner and Zagel actually tell Michael here? Surely not that, verbatim.
Interesting piece otherwise.
Our global supply chain is just so fragile and insecure. We may need to rethink everything. For a start, is it not ridiculous that we have unsealed/re-sealable products? I do not want Ibuprofen etc. to be moved to behind-counter, but perhaps a better 'discard if tampered with' seal should be implemented. Will we get to a point where we have to sell fruit in tear-open cardboard mailers? Sounds ridiculous, but depends on what happens in the next decade re: terrorism in general.
> Maybe it’s just me, but I find it kind of sad to think that you got buried in a grave with no headstone, no marker, no indication of who you were.
I appreciate this melancholy - even a compassionate wistfulness.
Conversely though - For me, it just feels part of an Ozymandian futility. If the suffering of dying + the suffering of others' grief are removed from the equation, it feels like there is an elegance to just dissolve back to the environment without a struggle, in a certain graceful way.
A headstone in that context is a 'struggle'.
To me, graves are for the living and never the dead.