Definitely cruel and unusual punishment. Just the overcrowding alone is illegal, throw in the mold, you're talking torture.
It's absolutely illegal to knowingly subject people to dangerous/deadly moldy conditions like that. If this were a private home, it would be condemned and any children living there would be taken by child services for being abused.
Every officer in that unit should have to spend at least one night a month in one of those dungeons, then go home to their families without access to showers or clean clothes. They would have it spotless before the first night, guaranteed.
I certainly hope those inmates CAN start a class action suit against the Sheriff's office, but it's likely they are indemnified by law from responsibility for their conditions.

Somebody call the county building inspector and get that place closed.

I guess it's possible he lost his ability to read later in life. He's quite old, and possible has health issues with his eyes, or perhaps more seriously has had a few strokes which is not unusual for his age. And a stroke could have impaired his ability to read.

I hope we find out the truth one way or another, because this is scary.

Yup; here is the Live Science take---in brief--it's a conceptual artist's thing (Vitaly Bulgarov) who has faked a website and even the Korea development company...

"New video clips purporting to show a 13-foot-tall (4 meters) humanoid robot piloted by a person in its torso look like something straight out of "Avatar" or "Transformers," but a Live Science investigation has revealed reasons to believe some skepticism might be in order.

The robot clips have been picked up by a variety of online news and technology outlets, including Kotaku and Wired UK. But the South Korean company that is supposedly developing the robot has virtually no online presence and was unfamiliar to robotics researchers contacted by Live Science.

Furthermore, the only source for the videos or any information about them is the Facebook and Instagram pages of a designer whose website mentions a conceptual art project about a "fictional robotics corporation that develops its products in a not-so-distant future."

The designer, Vitaly Bulgarov, told Live Science that the robot is real. However, he declined to share the names of scientists or engineers working on the project, and messages to the purported CEO of the company went unreturned. [Gallery: See Images of the Giant Humanoid Robot]

Mystery business

According to Bulgarov's Facebook page, the videos were taken in South Korea at a company called Korea Future Technology. Almost all references to this company online appear to be associated with Bulgarov's posts and the subsequent news pieces on the robot. Bulgarov said the company has been operating for several years."

""Robots are messy business," said Christian Hubicki, a postdoctoral robotics researcher at Georgia Tech who worked on the DURUS robot. "They get torn apart and put back together over and over, and transmission grease gets all over the place. Even the nice white floor is beautifully unscuffed [in these videos]. Never once during likely hundreds of hours of debugging the giant robot did it kick in a way that scratched it up?"

The people around the robot also appear to be too close for safety and are not following the standard practice of wearing safety goggles, Hubicki said.

Bulgarov said the company's CEO required that the lab be clean, and that the videos had been brightened in postproduction. Fearing said robotics labs in Asia can be relatively neat.

However, there's another problem: Hubicki told Live Science that the robot's leg joints look unusually smooth given the force that the step of a 1.5-ton robot would exert on the motors. [5 Reasons to Fear Robots]"

http://www.livescience.com/57296-giant-humanoid-robot-video-hoax.html

Thing that really sticks in my throat here.

The most generous current estimate of trans % by population is 0.6%.

The mother of the child here is a vehement and very pro-active trans rights campaigner.

I don't know the proportion of life long trans campaigners, but I'm pretty sure the odds of them having a trans kid are vanishingly small. Much more so for such an extreme and unusual case as this one.

We are both relegated to pure speculation here but, I know at least one example (my brothers partner) of a girl being raised by a lesbian mother, who had deep emotional problems instilled into her from a very early age. i.e. men are bad, she should be attracted to women etc.

Took her well into adulthood to get over that and she is still a mixed up person (mother is to put it politely; a bit mental)

This is a different example of course, but the underlying problem and how it messed her up for most of her childhood seems like it could be similar. We are so used to the prejudices against "normal" gender roles and sexual orientation that it is perhaps easy to forget that this can work just as easily in reverse.
The problem can essentially be asshole parents instilling a mixed up and narrow concept of what is normal. Which either restricts their existing exploration of identity, or actively coerces towards a particular outcome.

IDK, you may just be right and the kid manifested this underlying genetic problem at a very early age. Her mother may be a perfectly even handed and caring person etc. etc.

It just concerns me that it could so easily be the other way around. But you are right about many people simply adopting alternative gender roles rather than physically transitioning. But if this kid starts the hormone blockers, she is sterile for life and will undergo irreversible changes in her development.

If she were to change her mind later in life as she matures... that 40% suicide rate is no joke

& yeh there are certainly strong arguments from inside the trans community against ideas of non binary genders. Most trans people are one gender wishing to transition to, or be treated as the other gender.

I can see an argument for perhaps having a third intermediary gender, beyond that it seems more like lifestyle choices than actual gender issues. e.g. like you say a T.V. man who likes to dress as a woman isn't someone who wants to be a woman, or even gay. It's just a man who likes to feel beautiful in a dress and makeup (to quote Eddie Izzard "male lesbian").

Anyway I don't think you have said anything offensive. This is a mire of a subject and anyone reasonable is going to appreciate your (our) confusion & concerns.

@shagen454, You're on to something about the nature of the future of economics, and also society through the 1% vs. the 99%. You're not wrong that a lot of *money has made it's way to the top, and is staying there.

But it wasn't always this way.

In his film, Inequality For All, Robert Reich points out that during the time of great prosperity in the US (1947-1977) inequality was low, and taxes on the wealthy were much higher than they are today.

A correlation of the effect this was how marketing was thought of. In CBC's "Under The Influence" episode on The World of Business-To-Business Advertising they point out that B2B marketing used to be the boring place that nobody in advertising really wanted to work, but now B2B marketing is surging.

The CBC radio show doesn't get into asking why that changed, but through the lens of modern economics it isn't hard to see. B2B marketing used to be boring because with low inequality, consumers--*working people*--had all the money. Now, with high inequality, consumers are broke, and all that money is just flowing among corporations, never really trickling more than a few breadcrumbs upon the serfs.

This has deep impacts on society and politics, especially in a land where "money is speech" and all the money is just passed between a few companies and their owners. This means that in the US, there are as few as 144,000 people who have enough "speech" (meaning money) that their voice actually matters, as is pointed out by Lawrence Lessig.


Videos:

--Robert Reich --

It is an unusual choice to elect a 5 time bankrupt lying sex offender.
Funnily enough if he had just index linked that 14 million his daddy gave him in 1960 he'd have several hundred billion dollars.
Still, maybe at 72 he'll finally stop failing and exploiting people and cryng like a little girl when he's insulted.

Saw the movie last night, this scene is amazing and anything but 'hokey and cheap' I assure you. Mind your seeing this out of context as well.

**very minor spoiler**

One of the myriad dimensions displayed in the movie, the MIrror Dimension is a place that 'reflects' reality and cannot cause harm to our dimension. It is also highly susceptible to magical manipulation and is connected to the Dark Dimension which gives the villain here a very good amount of control over it. Thus he is able to warp New York city not in reality, but in this Mirror Dimension. This is why at the beginning of the video Mordo says 'this isn't a good idea, it's suicide' after Dr. Strange shifts everyone over to the Mirror Dimension to protect the normal world.

Over-all the movie is a trippy, highly unusual experience with CG unlike ever seen before. It is relatively formulaic in that many Marvel movies but because it goes places and does things never seen before you hardly notice. It's a fantastic experience.

This is my home town, and Cantonese isn't that unusual here.

I too was pleasantly surprised and excited to see Donny in the trailer until he spoke... I think Donny's unusually bad accent/line delivery here sticks out like a sore thumb... but I'm Chinese so I might be overly sensitive? Still, seeing him wielding that staff is awesome. Trailer is otherwise great. Not bringing my hopes up much though. SW7:TFA was so middle of the road for me (i.e. Better than the prequels but not as good as the OT) I wish Rogue One is much much better.

That was awesome.

The origin of a riff being "accidental" doesn't seem unusual -- people come up with riffs that get turned into earworm songs while just jamming / screwing around all the time.

But having the combination of sudden inspiration and accidental creation of the riff immediately followed by impromptu creation of the lyrics is really really cool.

Awesome sift, thanks!

Not a prank, it's a con.

He claims to be donating all his own cash, but in reality has taken a lot of donations and his money in the campaign is 'loaned'. The campaign hosts lavish events in Trump's facilities, paying full price (or more). He and everyone in his family is getting a salary from campaign funds (which is unusual for the candidate).

The guy's broke (again) and saw this as a good way to raise his profile and some quick cash.

Ha! That's my neighborhood.

Worst rondelle ever. No one knows how to use it. It's not unusual to see drivers sitting there, unsure of what to do.

Oh, and, cop's a colossal prick. Although, he is not lying that they use their phones for police business.

About as fucked up as the fact that by denying a woman an abortion, the state is both physically and economically punishing her for getting pregnant by forcing her to carry an unwanted child to term (with all the associated medical costs/risks that involves) as well as be legally and financially responsible for said child until the child reaches adulthood. What was that about cruel and unusual punishments in the Constitution?

Also about as fucked up as ascribing the full legal rights and privileges usually afforded to fully developed human beings to a barely developed fetus.

EDIT: But this is Trump we're talking about, so I should have assumed from the start that anything that comes out of his mouth is going to be "fucked up."

Those glasses that she wore - are they for fashion or a medical condition i wonder? They look really heavy duty and a bit where's wallyish to boot, but i know Japanese fashion can sometimes appear unusual to a westerner and vice versa i'm sure.

Unrelated but it makes me remember when i first reluctantly got glasses as a kid, my dad just picked some random frames that he'd pick and they were huge and hideous, i was mortified and nearly in tears. What i can only assume was my fairy godmother interjected from across the room, clearly not wanting me to wear a bully's target and said "he's got a small face, he needs thin ones" and showed me a bunch that i actually ended up liking. Forever grateful whoever and wherever you are!

Blocked for me in Thailand also, and I haven't found a proxy that will let it load (which is a little unusual, I can usually get one to work if I'm motivated).