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[martinuzz]

Better start practicing.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð
feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah,
oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra
ofer hronrade hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan. þæt wæs god cyning.

[Lord Shonus]

So Trump decreed that the official language of the US is english.

How are they going to manage that? Almost no one in the US speaks english.

I thought it already was. So did he decree something that was already done, or did they not have an official language?

The US has no official language prior to this executive order, and the EO itself is largely meaningless legally. Actually implementing an official language would require an act of Congress because it interacts with so many things.

[Grim Portent]

I imagine the goal will be to take down government resources that are available in Spanish. Spanish is really common in the US, and given the xenophobia running rampant through the MAGA movement they seem the type to want to remove any and all things 'foreign' from the country.

[martinuzz]

Or they're preparing to purge Canada of french after the annexation

[Starver]

Or they're preparing to purge Canada of french after the annexation

Mais non! La plume de ma tante est dans le jardin, et mon postillon a été frappé par la foudre!

(Though, maybe... helaas, pindakaas!)

[martinuzz]

Gene Hackman, his wife and 1 of his 3 dogs dropped dead on the spot in their home and were found lasts wednesday when a handyman noticed their front door was open.
Police says the couple likely died on the 17th of this month, according to the data of his pacemaker.
An investigation into their mysterious deaths is ongoing.

Geeshs that must have been some fast acting poison. They were found in different places in the house. Hackman was found with his cane and sunglasses, as if ready to go out for a walk, his wife was found in the bathroom, she dropped dead while holding a pill box, all the pills spilled over the floor.
Are there venomous animals in the US that kill that fast?

[Starver]

The initial thoughts were carbon monoxide, they were saying until yesterday(?), which is plausible in several ways (though usually causes a sleeping household just to never wake up) and the resulting headache might have explained the seeking out of medication by the wife. But early tests seem to have ruled that out.

Gene was old and, though not particularly unwell (pacemaker aside), last I heard he was discovered as of a fall (they seem not to have discovered particular injuries, so probably something more subtle than the all too common pelvic hemorrhage), for which my inexpert (and grisly) assessment would suggest that this happened when his wife and loving carer (30 years his junior) was incapacitated and unable to do anything (or was going to, but suffered her episode before she could return, e.g. with his pills.

Toxicology results will apparently take months (or, maybe, it will take that long to rule out everything, or else establish that earlier 'hits' weren't part of a combo of effects in play), but that doesn't mean that there aren't still internal hard theories of the kind not released to the public (or even family!) at this early stage.


My current conclusions (not that anybody is asking me, and based upon only what I heard up to last night) is probably a slightly different cause (or combination) of death for him from that of his wife and the dog (apparently in a cupboard/cubbyhole in the same room as she was found). Seemingly no reason to suspect any third party(/ies). I'd be surprised (though it's still possible) if it's a murder/suicide (either way), but much more so if it was a suicide-pact (for multiple good reasons). It'd be a far-fetched plot to have been some conclusion of a vendetta (or counter-action) against either Popeye Doyle or Lex Luthor, all hidden in 'plain sight'.


But that's all verging into gruesome (if not completely unjustified!) speculation. And what I picked up may well be outdated by this sfternoon, anyway. Of everything that's in the news, though, it's probably one of the easiest things to chat about, At least in the hope that my contribution doesn't leach its way back to his loved ones, given it's not really helping all due respect to the deceased or their family.

[EuchreJack]

I'm still mostly convinced it's carbon monoxide until it's definitely ruled out, since the whole scenario just sounds like carbon monoxide.

[Starver]

I'm still mostly convinced it's carbon monoxide until it's definitely ruled out, since the whole scenario just sounds like carbon monoxide.

Spoiler: Again, based only on what I already knew, this is the path I'd already been down... just call me Miss SFX Wimsey, MD (click to show/hide)

 Details were sketchy, but a portable ('shelf-top'?) heater seems to have been on the floor next to her. CO or (though they'd have smelled it) its fuel-gas having leaked could have poisoned/asphyxiated at least her.

Sealed(ish) room/rooms accumulating enough troublesome gas at the time, but (either leaking or badly-burning) the appliance running out of fuel and then the rooms still being ventilated enough to make tests (and general experience of the atmosphere by discoverers/recoverers) 10 or more days later come up blank? And I don't know enough about post-mortem timelines, but freshly-monoxided victims exhibit colouration signs to their lips as a big red (or, as the case may be, blue) flag for investigators fresh on the scene.

Freeon-style gas asphixiation (from the household HVAC system; probably not fire-suppression, like I'm more used to... "never go into the datacentre without letting a colleague or gwo know that you're there, in case of emergencies/evacuations", etc) was a further idea, though surely guarded avainst. Also hits practical limits as to why an "indoor dog" survived, and questions the link between his location and hers(+dead-dog's), without even knowing enough about which rooms of the residence were sealed off (to gas or canines) from which others by sufficient degree. And further questions about the dogs alive for 10(?) days without apparent care, without assuming the inside (non-lethal) section of the house had ingress/egress from the great outdoors (and enough incautious squirrels?) but that leads down other avenues.

But I wasn't going to mull further over. That's just what I had already mulled over, being so far untempted to update myself. Not quite depleted of pre-prepared ponderings, but it's not as fun a game to play as it might seem I think it is.

[Eric Blank]

As far as the other dog surviving, it wouldn't have starved to death and might have drunk water out of the toilet (which usually automatically refill if they get low enough to lift the lever)

[Starver]

As far as the other dog surviving, it wouldn't have starved to death and might have drunk water out of the toilet (which usually automatically refill if they get low enough to lift the lever)

...something strange in that assumption, either about dogs or toilets.

Toilet bowls (in the various 'western' types of potty-porcelain that you'd expect, at least) don't refill unless you flush (and eventually get below the U-bend level, which then opens up the the usual air-locking from the septic pipes). It's quite a party trick (though not unknown) for a dog to flush a loo. (Ditto for unconventional bidet use; see tap-nudging, below, but also the assumption that the fixtures in this room were not relevent.)

The cistern autofils (when flushed, or otherwise emptied), but I don't know of many that are (intentionally) left open to drinking water out of. I mean, I regularly have to take the top off one of mine because the valve is a little sticky and the ballcock floats up but doesn't quite stop the flow (it starts draining down the 'overflow', which - in this particular case - results in a trickle into the bowl, rather than the usual out of the wall). It's only a very slow trickle, but I do like to take the cistern lid off and manually press down on the thing that the levered stopcock arm hasn't quite pressed down enough upon, to stop it entirely, then replace the lid. (I'm not tempted to leave the cistern lid off, with or without dogs in the house.) But I can't believe that this couple (with a couple of occasional maintenance workers on tap, NPI!) would put up with the same situation as I do, never mind go full slob and leave the top off to save the (minor) effort of removing it after every other flush whenever there's the audio cue is that it's "doing it again...".


Though my best guess was already that the surviving dog left inside (assuming that it wasn't just a dog that happened to be found inside a bit of the house with the external door left open, and - like the dog that was outside - could 'happily' be in relative shelter from the current climate or outside where puddles form and - just possibly, depending upon the dog - food could be found) just had enough water in the water-bowl (maybe an autodispensing one, and perhaps then even a hopper-fed autodispensing dry dog-food thing as well, 'cos any reasonably wealthy person might well have invested in such a labour-saving gadget to do at least part of the job of caring for their pets) or an indoor fountain (or fish-tank? ...though they frequently have hard covers on as well) or was even one of those that had learned to nudge a tap(/faucet)-lever (if not nudge it back), or did learn that within a couple of days of desperation.

Again, all this on the initial information that one dog was (in a closet/cubbyhole?) in the bathroom with the wife, when it'd be not unnatural to assume the bathroom door was closed by habit/spring. And the other was therefore roaming "in (a part of) the rest of the house", presumably not ever there (in the apparently deadly bathroom) at all, to access the loo-water in any form. Maybe not accessing the area where the husband was laying, either.

But I still haven't tried to update my original information, let alone bring out the camera-friendly "glass whiteboard" and started scrawling floorplans (and, for some reason, mathematical equations) across it, or pinning photos of everyone the couple knew to a basement wall, with loads of red string connecting them and random bits of paper from household bills to half-redacted US Government documents.

[martinuzz]

Over 20% of all british undercover officers got into a relation with the target. Out of 25 known cases, in 4 of those the cop even made children with the target.
How are you ever going to tell that to the kids. "I made you guys so I could throw your mom in prison".

I wonder how that works though, if you register your kids using a fake name. Once your undercover ends and you get your real name back, What will be the kid's name? Are they even still legally yours? What is their status? Are they police evidence?

[pisskop]

I imagine they met the spouse while posing undercover.  Not that the targets were the spouses.

They went native so to speak.

[Mathel]

I don't know british laws, but here are some common sense ideas:

1. The child takes the last name of the mother (whether it was the officer or the target), because the marriage was fake. The real last name.
2. If the target goes to prison, the officer gets custody of the children by default, since they remain the only free parent. They might refuse and then the target's family would be next in line to get custody. After that option, it's orphanage.
    If the target doesn't go to prison, or there is a lengthy trial, I imagine there would be a custody battle (alongside whatever the target is sued for), since the target woudn't want the person who revealed their misdeeds to have custody of their child.

[NJW2000]

I don't know british laws, but here are some common sense ideas:

1. The child takes the last name of the mother (whether it was the officer or the target), because the marriage was fake. The real last name.
2. If the target goes to prison, the officer gets custody of the children by default, since they remain the only free parent. They might refuse and then the target's family would be next in line to get custody. After that option, it's orphanage.
    If the target doesn't go to prison, or there is a lengthy trial, I imagine there would be a custody battle (alongside whatever the target is sued for), since the target woudn't want the person who revealed their misdeeds to have custody of their child.

Unless you’re talking about the police officer, the assumption that the target carried out any “misdeeds” is prett unsound, especially in the cases when they’re not convicted. And that’s without considering the fact that this technique was used mainly in over-vigilant monitoring of leftwing political groups.

I’m not aware of any attempts by the police officers in question to involve themselves in the children’s lives after their undercover work ended. I don’t know the law myself, but I doubt fathering a child under a fake identity and the assumed name of a boy who died in infancy would play well in a custody court. Policemen are seen as very worthy members of society though, so you never do know.