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I just finished reading this Vice story and wanted to share but I don't think it deserves its own topic. It's a fascinating read but not really news or topical to any of the ongoing threads here, so why not create a new thread for something like this.



Post your interesting, fascinating, thoughtful, bizarre, funny, whatever stories/articles from around the internet here.



Here's My Grandma the Poisoner and the first two paragraphs:





When I was four or five, sometimes I’d walk into my grandmother’s bedroom to find her weeping. She’d be sitting on the side of the bed, going through boxes of tissues. I don’t believe this was a side of herself she shared with other people; she may have felt we had a cosmic bond because I had her father’s name as my middle name and his fair features. She was crying for Martha, her daughter, who died of melanoma at the age of 28. Ten years later, after Norman—her youngest child, my uncle—died, also at 28, she would weep for him.


People were always dying around Grandma—her children, her husbands, her boyfriend—so her lifelong state of grief was understandable. To see her sunken in her high and soft bed, enshrouded in the darkness of the attic, and surrounded by the skin-and-spit smell of old age, was to know that mothers don’t get what they deserve. Today, when I think back on it, I don’t wonder whether Grandma got what she deserved as a mother; I wonder whether she got what she deserved as a murderer.





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I just finished reading this Vice story and wanted to share but I don't think it deserves its own topic. It's a fascinating read but not really news or topical to any of the ongoing threads here, so why not create a new thread for something like this.

Post your interesting, fascinating, thoughtful, bizarre, funny, whatever stories/articles from around the internet here.

Here's My Grandma the Poisoner and the first two paragraphs:

That was wild and freaky as all get out.

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A random article generator would be cool, if I had any skills making web pages I'd be all over that.



Although what I meant by random is that this is a thread for random articles that don't really fit any criteria for ongoing threads here but are good reads.


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ARGH THAT IS NOT WHAT RANDOM MEANS

Ha ha, you're so random. Also, it's like so random that that grandma drugged and killed everybody. And the most random thing was that the grandson was like "meh". That is just not awesomsauce at all. It would not be cool beans with me. Soooo random.

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True, we need a link in the OP that when you click in it, sends you to an article randomly selected.out of millions, then you post an excerpt and reflect.

Most egregious misuse of random might be.in o.line dating profiles -- "my friends say I'm random lol".

Okcupid used to have this thing where you had to enter three words to describe yourself and it literally wouldn't accept "random." It would tell you that that was too common an answer and to try again.

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This article is almost exactly a year old, but it's still pretty compelling and the problem is still there: NY Times magazine on the conflict (mostly between China and the Philippines) over the Spratly Islands, a few flyspecks of nothing in the South China Sea that are sitting on top of vast energy reserves. The heart of the story is a detachment of Philippine Marines assigned to live on a rotting ship in the middle of the area to keep the claim staked.



Really good use of video and images in the article body, as well.



http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2013/10/27/south-china-sea/



(As an aside, these very islands were the center of a Dale Brown potboiler I read in the 1990s, where he predicted World War 3 would break out)


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Okcupid used to have this thing where you had to enter three words to describe yourself and it literally wouldn't accept "random." It would tell you that that was too common an answer and to try again.

I know the dating thread has.beat several horses to death regarding overused, misused, and meaningless profile content and yet everywhere I look a.new mote offends my eye.

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I just finished reading this Vice story and wanted to share but I don't think it deserves its own topic. It's a fascinating read but not really news or topical to any of the ongoing threads here, so why not create a new thread for something like this.

Post your interesting, fascinating, thoughtful, bizarre, funny, whatever stories/articles from around the internet here.

Here's My Grandma the Poisoner and the first two paragraphs:

In some ways I think the most disturbing thing about that story is how totally blase the grandson was about the whole thing. "Oh yeah, and there was that time I saw my Grandma threatening to burn her own 12 year old son's dick off whilst making him stand in front of the broiler flames... huh, you know, I guess that was kind of emotionally and psychologically abusive and also totally psychotic. And hey, funny story, I just remembered the time when my Grandma may have caused my wife's late-term miscarriage!"

Also, here's a creepy thought for you. She used to drug him and knock him out for days. Sometimes, during these periods, he would stop breathing and need to be rushed to hospital. How did she know? Was she just... sitting there, watching the grandchild she'd drugged into unconsciousness, all night?

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I was really irked by how little he cared for some of the events as well. "Oh funny huh i totally forgot my wife had this horrible, traumatic experience and had a miscarriage late in the pregnancy haha wow that was totally a thing that happened maybe my grandmother did it?? Hmmm oh well!"

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In some ways I think the most disturbing thing about that story is how totally blase the grandson was about the whole thing. "Oh yeah, and there was that time I saw my Grandma threatening to burn her own 12 year old son's dick off whilst making him stand in front of the broiler flames... huh, you know, I guess that was kind of emotionally and psychologically abusive and also totally psychotic. And hey, funny story, I just remembered the time when my Grandma may have caused my wife's late-term miscarriage!"

Also, here's a creepy thought for you. She used to drug him and knock him out for days. Sometimes, during these periods, he would stop breathing and need to be rushed to hospital. How did she know? Was she just... sitting there, watching the grandchild she'd drugged into unconsciousness, all night?

Those who have lived through the trauma and abuse are more likely to excuse it and downplay it. For those who just see it from an outside perspective it is outrageous and should be dealt with by the authorities(and it should). But to somebody who lived it and saw it every day, they are numb and desensitized to it.

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But he didn't see it every day. He saw it occasionally on visits to her house. Norman saw it every day, and Norman may or may not have died as a result. I see what you're saying, but I don't think it applies to this case. His response to the idea that his Grandma may have had a hand in the deaths of four of her loved ones and his own unborn child is "I realized that I didn’t care what had happened, that nobody cares what happened, that caring is for cops on CSI and doctors on ER and muscle-bound Marines in the movies." That's just weird.


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He did have extended stays with her and even when not living there it sounds like she was a constant element of his life. It still may be a weird reaction, but IDK... I think people react differently to these things. Sometimes when somebody just doesn't know how to react because a revelation is so shocking to them they can come off as uncaring or different. Sometimes people will become suspects in the murders of their friends or loved ones because they didn't have a prototypical reaction.... some people react to tragedy with silence,some cope with comedy, some hold it in and don't show anybody their emotions, some downplay situations, some live in deniability. It's hard to say the reaction a victim will have.

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